lver, and, still more important, a handkerchief which he had
clutched in his dying struggles. It was obvious that she or some other
woman had been at Riversbrook the night of the murder, and in the room
with the murdered man before he died. That tallied with Birchill's
statement to Hill that he had seen a woman close the front door and walk
along the garden path while he was hiding in the garden. Crewe, recalling
Gabrielle's description of the room, came to the conclusion that it was
probably she who had been with the judge in his dying moments. No one but
a person who had actually seen it could have described the room with such
minuteness.

She had been in the room, then. For what object? For the reasons stated
in her confession? Crewe shook his head doubtfully.

"She evaded the trap about the pocket-book, but she made one bad
mistake," he mused. "The letters in the secret drawer were taken away,
and I have no doubt were burnt as she says. But were they her letters?
Was Sir Horace her lover? At any rate, she did not get hold of them in
the way she said. They were not taken away on the night Sir Horace was
murdered, for the simple reason that they were not in the secret drawer
at the time."

CHAPTER XXIV

Rolfe was spending a quiet evening in his room after a trying day's
inquiries into a confidence trick case; inquiries so fruitless that they
had brought down on his head an official reproof from Inspector
Chippenfield.

Rolfe had left Scotland Yard that evening in a somewhat despondent frame
of mind in consequence, but a brisk walk home and a good supper had done
him so much good, that with a tranquil mind and his pipe in his mouth, he
was able to devote himself to the hobby of his leisure hours with keen
enjoyment.

This hobby would have excited the wondering contempt of Joe Leaver, whose
frequent attendance at cinema theatres had led him to the conclusion that
police detectives--who, unlike his master, had to take the rough with the
smooth--spent their spare time practising revolver shooting, and throwing
daggers at an ace of hearts on the wall. Rolfe's hobby was nothing more
exciting than stamp collecting. He was deeply versed in the lore of
stamps, and his private ambition was to become the possessor of a "blue
Mauritius." His collection, though extensive, was by no means of fabulous
value, being made up chiefly of modest purchases from the stamp
collecting shops, and finds in the waste-paper-baskets