but the occasion was a pleasant one and I drained my glass. I
remember being slightly ashamed of doing so, for Mr. Leavenworth set his
down half full. It was half full when we found him this morning."

Do what he would, and being a reserved man he appeared anxious to
control his emotion, the horror of his first shock seemed to overwhelm
him here. Pulling his handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his
forehead. "Gentlemen, that is the last action of Mr. Leavenworth I ever
saw. As he set the glass down on the table, I said good-night to him and
left the room."

The coroner, with a characteristic imperviousness to all expressions
of emotion, leaned back and surveyed the young man with a scrutinizing
glance. "And where did you go then?" he asked.

"To my own room."

"Did you meet anybody on the way?"

"No, sir."

"Hear any thing or see anything unusual?"

The secretary's voice fell a trifle. "No, sir."

"Mr. Harwell, think again. Are you ready to swear that you neither
met anybody, heard anybody, nor saw anything which lingers yet in your
memory as unusual?"

His face grew quite distressed. Twice he opened his lips to speak,
and as often closed them without doing so. At last, with an effort, he
replied:

"I saw one thing, a little thing, too slight to mention, but it was
unusual, and I could not help thinking of it when you spoke."

"What was it?"

"Only a door half open."

"Whose door?"

"Miss Eleanore Leavenworth's." His voice was almost a whisper now.

"Where were you when you observed this fact?"

"I cannot say exactly. Probably at my own door, as I did not stop on
the way. If this frightful occurrence had not taken place I should never
have thought of it again."

"When you went into your room did you close your door?"

"I did, sir."

"How soon did you retire?"

"Immediately."

"Did you hear nothing before you fell asleep?"

Again that indefinable hesitation.

"Barely nothing."

"Not a footstep in the hall?"

"I might have heard a footstep."

"Did you?"

"I cannot swear I did."

"Do you think you did?"

"Yes, I think I did. To tell the whole: I remember hearing, just as I
was falling into a doze, a rustle and a footstep in the hall; but it
made no impression upon me, and I dropped asleep."

"Well?"

"Some time later I woke, woke suddenly, as if something had startled me,
but what, a noise or move, I cannot say. I remember rising up in my bed
and looking around, but hearing no