;
and within forty-eight hours some amazing circumstances were brought
to light.

First and foremost, Mr. Henry Trent, who said he had given the gems
over to Colliver, and that the man had immediately left the office,
was unable, through the fact of his son's absence from town, to give
any further proof of that statement than his own bare word; for
there was nobody but himself in the office at the time, whereas the
door porter, who distinctly remembered James Colliver's entrance into
the building, as distinctly remembered that up to the moment when
evening brought "knocking-off time" James Colliver had never, to his
certain knowledge, come out of it!

The next amazing fact to be unearthed was that one of the office
cleaners had found tucked under the stairs leading up to the top
floor a sponge, which had beyond all possible question been used to
wipe blood from something and had evidently been tucked there in a
great hurry. The third amazing discovery took the astonishing shape
of finding in an East End pawnbroker's shop every one of the missing
articles, and positive proof that the man who had pledged them was
certainly not in the smallest degree like James Colliver, but was
evidently a person of a higher walk in life and more prosperous
in appearance than the missing man had been since the days when he
was a successful actor.

These circumstances Cleek had just brought to light when Miss Larue,
having found the gems, determined to drop the case, and refused
thereafter so much as to discuss it with any living soul.

That her reason for taking this unusual step had something behind it
which was of more moment than the mere fact that the jewels had
been recovered and returned to their respective owners there could
hardly be a doubt; for from that time onward her whole nature seemed
to undergo a radical change, and, from being a brilliant, vivacious,
cheery-hearted woman whose spirits were always of the highest and
whose laughter was frequent, she developed suddenly into a silent,
smileless, mournful one, who shrank from all society but that of
her lost brother's orphaned son, and who seemed to be oppressed
by the weight of some unconfessed cross and the shadow of some
secret woe.

Such were the facts regarding the singular Colliver case at the time
when Cleek laid it down--unprobed, unsolved, as deep a mystery in the
end as it had been in the beginning--and such they still were when,
on this day, at this critical