.

"She was there for no good purpose," said I, "and yet if you had not
characterized her as the person most responsible for the crimes we are
here to investigate, I should have said from all that I then saw of her
conduct that she acted as a supernumerary rather than principal, and
that it is to me you should look for the correct clue to the criminal,
notwithstanding your confidence in your own theories and my momentary
hesitation to assert that there was no possible defect in mine."

"Miss Butterworth,"--I thought he looked a trifle shaken,--"what did
Mother Jane do in that closely shuttered house last night?"

Mother Jane? Well! Did he think I was going to introduce my tragic story
by telling what Mother Jane did? I must have looked irritated, and
indeed I think I had cause.

"Mother Jane ate her supper," I snapped out angrily. "Miss Knollys gave
it to her. Then she helped a little with a piece of work they had on
hand. It will not interest you to know what. It has nothing to do with
your clue, I warrant."

He did not get angry. He has an admirable temper, has Mr. Gryce, but he
did stop a minute to consider.

"Miss Butterworth," he said at last, "most detectives would have held
their peace and let you go on with what you have to tell without a hint
that it was either unwelcome or unnecessary, but I have consideration
for persons' feelings and for persons' secrets so long as they do not
come in collision with the law, and my opinion is, or was when I entered
this room, that such discoveries as you have made at your old friend's
house" (Why need he emphasize friend--did he think I forgot for a moment
that Althea was my friend?) "were connected rather with some family
difficulty than with the dreadful affair we are considering. That is why
I hastened to tell you that we had found a clue to the disappearances in
Mother Jane's cottage. I wished to save the Misses Knollys."

If he had thought to mollify me by this assertion, he did not succeed.
He saw it and made haste to say:

"Not that I doubt your consideration for them, only the justness of your
conclusions."

"You have doubted those before and with more reason," I replied, "yet
they were not altogether false."

"That I am willing to acknowledge, so willing that if you still think
after I have told my story that yours is _apropos_, then I will listen
to it only too eagerly. My object is to find the real criminal in this
matter. I say at the present moment i