rchief, letter, and key, passed after the murder through
other hands, before reaching hers; and secondly, that some one else had
even a stronger reason than she for desiring Mr. Leavenworth's death at
this time.

"Smith, my boy, both of these hypotheses have been established by me. By
dint of moleing into old secrets, and following unpromising clues, I have
finally come to the conclusion that not Eleanore Leavenworth, dark as
are the appearances against her, but another woman, beautiful as she,
and fully as interesting, is the true criminal. In short, that her
cousin, the exquisite Mary, is the murderer of Mr. Leavenworth, and by
inference of Hannah Chester also."

He brought this out with such force, and with such a look of triumph
and appearance of having led up to it, that I was for the moment
dumbfounded, and started as if I had not known what he was going to say.
The stir I made seemed to awake an echo. Something like a suppressed
cry was in the air about me. All the room appeared to breathe horror and
dismay. Yet when, in the excitement of this fancy, I half turned round
to look, I found nothing but the blank eyes of those dull ventilators
staring upon me.

"You are taken aback!" Mr. Gryce went on. "I don't wonder. Every one
else is engaged in watching the movements of Eleanore Leavenworth; I
only know where to put my hand upon the real culprit. You shake your
head!" (Another fiction.) "You don't believe me! Think I am deceived.
Ha, ha! Ebenezer Gryce deceived after a month of hard work! You are as
bad as Miss Leavenworth herself, who has so little faith in my sagacity
that she offered me, of all men, an enormous reward if I would find for
her the assassin of her uncle! But that is neither here nor there;
you have your doubts, and you are waiting for me to solve them. Well,
nothing is easier. Know first that on the morning of the inquest I made
one or two discoveries not to be found in the records, viz.: that the
handkerchief picked up, as I have said, in Mr. Leavenworth's library,
had notwithstanding its stains of pistol grease, a decided perfume
lingering about it. Going to the dressing-table of the two ladies, I
sought for that perfume, and found it in Mary's room, not Eleanore's.
This led me to examine the pockets of the dresses respectively worn by
them the evening before. In that of Eleanore I found a handkerchief,
presumably the one she had carried at that time. But in Mary's there was
none, nor did I se