rary, a pleasant room which I have
often envied him. Even the most happily married man wishes, now and
then, for some quiet, dull room which is essentially his own. My own
library is really the family sitting-room, and a Christmas or so ago
my wife presented me with a very handsome phonograph instrument. My
reading, therefore, is done to music, and the necessity for putting
my book down to change the record at times interferes somewhat with my
train of thought.

So I entered Sperry's library with appreciation. He was standing by the
fire, with the grave face and slightly bent head of his professional
manner. We say, in the neighborhood, that Sperry uses his professional
manner as armor, so I was rather prepared to do battle; but he
forestalled me.

"Horace," he said, "I have been a fool, a driveling idiot. We were
getting something at those sittings. Something real. She's wonderful.
She's going to give it up, but the fact remains that she has some power
we haven't, and now I've discredited her! I see it plainly enough." He
was rather bitter about it, but not hostile. His fury was at himself.
"Of course," he went on, "I am sure that she got nothing from Hawkins.
But the fact remains--" He was hurt in his pride of her.

"I wonder," I said, "if you kept the letter Hawkins wrote you when he
asked for a position."

He was not sure. He went into his consulting room and was gone for some
time. I took the opportunity to glance over his books and over the room.

Arthur Wells's stick was standing in a corner, and I took it up and
examined it. It was an English malacca, light and strong, and had seen
service. It was long, too long for me; it occurred to me that Wells had
been about my height, and that it was odd that he should have carried so
long a stick. There was no ease in swinging it.

From that to the memory of Hawkins's face when Sperry took it, the night
of the murder, in the hall of the Wells house, was only a step. I seemed
that day to be thinking considerably about Hawkins.

When Sperry returned I laid the stick on the table. There can be no
doubt that I did so, for I had to move a book-rack to place it. One
end, the handle, was near the ink-well, and the ferrule lay on a copy
of Gibson's "Life Beyond the Grave," which Sperry had evidently been
reading.

Sperry had found the letter. As I glanced at it I recognized the writing
at once, thin and rather sexless, Spencerian.

Dear Sir: Since Mr. Wells's death I a