. Trent looked them over with a
questioning eye. He noted also that the occupant of the room had neither
washed nor shaved. With his finger he turned over the dental plate in
the bowl, and frowned again at its incomprehensible presence.

The emptiness and disarray of the little room, flooded by the sunbeams,
were producing in Trent a sense of gruesomeness. His fancy called up a
picture of a haggard man dressing himself in careful silence by the
first light of dawn, glancing constantly at the inner door behind which
his wife slept, his eyes full of some terror.

Trent shivered, and to fix his mind again on actualities opened two tall
cupboards in the wall on either side of the bed. They contained
clothing, a large choice of which had evidently been one of the very few
conditions of comfort for the man who had slept there.

In the matter of shoes, also, Manderson had allowed himself the
advantage of wealth. An extraordinary number of these, treed and
carefully kept, was ranged on two long low shelves against the wall.
Trent, himself an amateur of good shoe-leather, now turned to them, and
glanced over the collection with an appreciative eye. It was to be seen
that Manderson had been inclined to pride himself on a rather small and
well-formed foot. The shoes were of a distinctive shape, narrow and
round-toed, beautifully made; all were evidently from the same last.

Suddenly his eyes narrowed themselves over a pair of patent-leather
shoes on the upper shelf.

These were the shoes of which the inspector had already described the
position to him; the shoes worn by Manderson the night before his death.
They were a well-worn pair, he saw at once; he saw, too, that they had
been very recently polished. Something about the uppers of these shoes
had seized his attention. He bent lower and frowned over them, comparing
what he saw with the appearance of the neighboring shoes. Then he took
them up and examined the line of juncture of the uppers with the soles.

As he did this, Trent began unconsciously to whistle faintly, and with
great precision, an air which Inspector Murch, if he had been present,
would have recognized.

Most men who have the habit of self-control have also some involuntary
trick which tells those who know them that they are suppressing
excitement. The inspector had noted that, when Trent had picked up a
strong scent, he whistled faintly a certain melodious passage; though
the inspector could not have told