as to impart."

"I will, then," the detective declared, a gloomy frown suddenly
corrugating his brow; and he stepped across to the screen which had been
indicated to him, and quietly withdrew from view.

He had scarcely done this, when a short, quick step was heard at the
door, and a wide-awake voice called out, cheerily:

"Are you alone, sir?"

"Ah!" ejaculated Mr. Ferris, "come in, come in. I have been awaiting
you for some minutes," he declared, ignoring the look which the man
threw hastily around the room. "Any news this morning?"

"No," returned the other, in a tone of complete self-satisfaction.
"We've caged the bird and mustn't expect much more in the way of news.
I'm on my way to Albany now, to pick up such facts about him as may be
lying around there loose, and shall be ready to start for Toledo any day
next week that you may think proper."

"You are, then, convinced that Mr. Hildreth is undeniably the guilty
party in this case?" exclaimed the District Attorney, taking a whiff at
his cigar.

"Convinced? That is a strong word, sir. A detective is never convinced,"
protested the man. "He leaves that for the judge and jury. But if you
ask me if there is any doubt about the direction in which all the
circumstantial evidence in this case points, I must retort by asking you
for a clue, or the tag-end of a clue, guiding me elsewhere. I know," he
went on, with the volubility of a man whose work is done, and who feels
he has the right to a momentary indulgence in conversation, "that it is
not an agreeable thing to subject a gentleman like Mr. Hildreth to the
shame of a public arrest. But facts are not partial, sir; and the
gentleman has no more rights in law than the coarsest fellow that we
take up for butchering his mother. But you know all this without my
telling you, and I only mention it to excuse any obstinacy I may have
manifested on the subject. He is mightily cut up about it," he again
proceeded, as he found Mr. Ferris forebore to reply. "I am told he
didn't sleep a wink all night, but spent his time alternately in pacing
the floor like a caged lion, and in a wild sort of stupor that had
something of the hint of madness in it. 'If my grandfather had only
known!' was the burden of his song; and when any one approached him he
either told them to keep their eyes off him, or else buried his face in
his hands with an entreaty for them not to disturb the last hours of a
dying man. He evidently has no hope of e