rd of this business should reach the press,
or even pass beyond the three officials interested.

Strange to say, they were able to keep this compact, and days elapsed
without any public recognition of the new factor which had entered into
the consideration of this complicated crime.

Then a hint of what was seething in the official mind was allowed to
carry its own shock to the person most interested. Mr. Roberts was
summoned to an interview with Coroner Price. No reason was given for this
act, but the time was set with an exactness which gave importance to a
request which they all felt the director would not venture to disregard.

Nor did he. He came at the time appointed, and Coroner Price in welcoming
him with becoming deference could not but notice the great change which
had taken place in him since that night they stood together in the museum
and saw the Indian make the trial with bow and arrow which located the
point of delivery as that of the upper pedestal. In just what this change
lay, the Coroner hardly knew, unless it was in the increased grayness of
his hair. Mr. Roberts' face, handsome as it was, was not an expressive
one. Slight emotions made no impression there; nor did he to-day present
anything but a calm and dignified appearance. Yet he was changed; and
anyone who had not seen him since that night must certainly observe it.

The Coroner, who was also a man of a somewhat stolid cut, proffered him a
seat and at once opened fire.

"You will pardon me any inconvenience I may have put you to, Mr. Roberts,
when I tell you that Coroner D---- of Greene County, is anxious to have a
few words with you. He would have visited you at your home; but I induced
him to see you here."

"Coroner D---- of Greene County!" Mr. Roberts was entirely surprised.
"And what business can he have with me?"

"It is in regard to the suicide of Madame Antoinette Duclos, committed,
as you know, a week since in the Catskills."

"Ah! an extraordinarily sad affair, and of considerable moment I should
judge, from its seeming connection with the one previously occurring at
our museum. The girls' mother, was she not? Grief evidently unseated her
brain. But--" here he changed his position quietly but with evident
effort:--"in what manner am I supposed to be in a position to help the
Coroner in his inquiry into this case? I was a witness, together with
many others, of what happened after the accident which took place at the
museum; but