footprints which
converged at the door. One set straggled unevenly up the stream. With an
exclamation he followed it along the bank until it swung close to the
water. He stooped. His lamp moved searchingly about the bottom of the
shallow creek. Nora bent over his shoulder.

"Jim! Do you see that stone? There. Hold your light steady. It's been
moved. Look at the dark stain on this side."

Garth reached over, rolling the stone away. He drew from the water a
stout, slender rope and a black cloth. As he raised the cloth a tiny
bottle fell from its folds and splintered on the rock.

Nora's eyes sparkled.

"Does it fit, Jim?"

"It suggests a lot," he answered, "and it explains something, but it's
little use unless--"

He caught his breath.

"He might be that kind of a fool."

He sprang upright.

"Come along. We've got to turn up something in the house that will make
Randall talk. Nora! If there had been letters do you think she would
have destroyed them one by one? You see there was no chance after the
murder, and don't women cling to such things?"

"She'd probably keep them," Nora said.

They climbed the hill. The unlighted house, like a thing dead itself and
surrendered to decay, arose before them forbiddingly.

"Jones was right," Nora said. "It's spooky."

Garth crossed the verandah on tip-toe and silently opened the door.

"No lights," he breathed.

Nora shivered.

"It's as cold and damp here as the stone house. Can you find your way?"

"Yes. Sh-h."

He led her across the hall, up the staircase, and down the corridor to
the dressing-room. The window had been closed in there, and there was no
escape for a humid and depressing chill which enveloped them with
discomfort.

He found the easy chair and told Nora to sit down. He drew another one
close.

"But why not lights, Jim?"

"It's logic to wait awhile," he said. "The letters, you know."

She gasped.

"I begin to see."

"Maybe I shouldn't have brought you," he whispered.

"But who--"

"Sh-h!"

"Did you hear anything?" she asked.

"No. If Randall never wore a rose--"

"Jim! I've never--felt such darkness."

"I must think," he said.

But his brain refused to enter the new country of speculation whose
gates the discovery in the stream had opened. The dank air of the room
where Treving had been murdered was thick with imminence. A formless
anticipation possessed Garth's mind. He had a quick instinct to turn on
the lights and proceed