e again that you were an educated man about to write
an anonymous, threatening letter. How would you go about doing that?"

"I'd use a typewriter to conceal my handwriting. I'd sign the thing in
an awkward scrawl." Krech saw the drift of it now. "And I'd take good
care to misspell a bunch of words!" he concluded triumphantly.

"That he faked illiteracy was a pure surmise, a mere possibility, until
now, when it gains color from the evidence of the footprints. A mental
twist that would make a small man disguise himself as a large one would
make an educated man resort to illiteracy. Logical, I think."

"Very likely. But how did you get this from footprints?"

"They were too shallow. I noticed that at once, and proved it by
parading yours alongside them. That fellow wore shoes as big as yours
and was running to boot, but his tracks were scarcely half the depth of
those you made. Get it?"

"Oh, yes," said Krech rather mournfully. "Two and two always make four
when you add them up. They never run to more than three and a half for
me." He sighed. "Creighton, I'd like once--just for _once_--to score
a beat over you!"

"Well, you may do it in this very case," remarked his friend
encouragingly. "You never can tell."

_XV: Treasure Trove_

The instant they stepped into the house they knew that the police had
left it. A calm, almost holy, peace seemed to have settled upon the
place, a far more fitting atmosphere considering the motionless form
that lay in a room upstairs, its eyes closed and its face more
reposeful than ever it had been in life. "I bring peace," wrote some
long-forgotten craftsman on the blade of the dagger he had just
fashioned, and in some measure wrote the truth.

"And I've got to stir them all up again," said Creighton half
regretfully.

"Can't make omelets without breaking eggs," was the responsive
platitude from Herman Krech. "I suppose you mean you're going to start
in asking questions."

"Millions of 'em. I've been here just a few hours and I've barely
scratched the surface of this case, yet I've learned already that Mr.
Varr had a fine bunch of evil-wishers. Where is that desk which was
broken open? Do you know?"

"Yes. It's in a small study in the back of the house that he used as a
sort of office, I guess. Come along and I'll show you. There's not a
soul in sight and we may as well make ourselves at home."

Creighton agreed, but before they reached the study