en it too, when the hand plunged into the hat, and drawing out the
kerchief, vanished with it behind the jamb that had already hidden so
much from his view.

"A fine gentleman's hand, and a fine gentleman's ring," was Mr. Byrd's
mental comment; and he was about to glance aside, when, to his great
astonishment, he saw the hand appear once more with the handkerchief in
it, but without the ring which a moment since had made it such a
conspicuous mark for his eyes.

"Our fine gentleman is becoming frightened," he thought, watching the
hand until it dropped the handkerchief back into the hat. "One does not
take off a ring in a company like this without a good reason." And he
threw a quick glance at the man he considered his rival in the detective
business.

But that worthy was busily engaged in stroking his chin in a feeling
way, strongly suggestive of a Fledgerby-like interest in his absent
whisker; and well versed as was Mr. Byrd in the ways of his
fellow-detectives, he found it impossible to tell whether the
significant action he had just remarked had escaped the attention of
this man or not. Confused if not confounded, he turned back to the
coroner, in a maze of new sensations, among which a growing hope that
his own former suspicions had been of a wholly presumptuous character,
rose predominant.

He found that functionary preparing to make a remark.

"Gentlemen," said he; "you have listened to the testimony of Mrs.
Clemmens' most confidential friend, and heard such explanations as she
had to give, of the special fears which Mrs. Clemmens acknowledges
herself to have entertained in regard to her personal safety. Now, while
duly impressing upon you the necessity of not laying too much stress
upon the secret apprehensions of a woman living a life of loneliness and
seclusion, I still consider it my duty to lay before you another bit of
the widow's writing, in which----"

Here he was interrupted by the appearance at his side of a man with a
telegram in his hand. In the pause which followed his reading of the
same, Mr. Byrd, with that sudden impulse of interference which comes
upon us all at certain junctures, tore out a leaf from his
memorandum-book, and wrote upon it some half dozen or so words
indicative of the advisability of examining the proprietor of the
Eastern Hotel as to the name and quality of the several guests
entertained by him on the day of the murder; and having signed this
communication with his initi