tion the mysterious Russian; but my auditor checked
me.

"Half a minute, Mr. Wynn," he said, as he filled in some words on a
form, and handed it to a police officer waiting inside the door. The man
took the paper, saluted, and went out.

"I gather that you did not search the rooms? That when you found the man
lying dead there, you simply came out and left everything as it was?"

"Yes. I saw at once we could do nothing; the poor fellow was cold and
rigid."

I felt that I spoke dully, mechanically; but the horror of the thing was
so strongly upon me, that, if I had relaxed the self-restraint I was
exerting, I think I should have collapsed altogether. This business-like
little official, who had received the news that a murder had been
committed as calmly as if I had merely told him some one had tried to
pick my pocket, could not imagine and must not suspect the significance
this ghastly discovery held for me, or the maddening conjectures that
were flashing across my mind.

"I wish every one would act as sensibly; it would save us a lot of
trouble;" he remarked, closing his note-book, and stowing it, and his
fountain pen, in his breast-pocket. "I will return with you now; my men
will be there before we are, and the divisional surgeon won't be long
after us."

[Illustration: _The rooms were in great disorder, and had been subjected
to an exhaustive search._ Page 51]

We walked the short distance in silence; and when we turned the corner
of the street where the block was situated, I saw that the news had
spread, as such news always does, in some unaccountable fashion, for
a little crowd had assembled, gazing at the closed street-door, and
exchanging comments and ejaculations.

I pulled out my keys, but, for all the self-control I thought I was
maintaining, my hand trembled so I could not fit the latch-key into the
lock.

"Allow me," said my companion, and took the bunch out of my shaking
hand, just as the door was opened from within by a constable who had
stationed himself in the lobby.

On the top landing we overtook another constable, and two plain-clothes
officers, to whom Jenkins was volubly asserting his belief that it was
none other than the assassin who had left the door open in the night.

The minute investigation that followed revealed several significant
facts. One was that the assassin must have been in the rooms for some
considerable time before Cassavetti returned,--to be struck down the
instant he