ightly.
Coming up softly after him, Adam Adams tried the door and found it
locked. More interested than ever, the detective, just avoiding Mrs.
Morse, who was passing through the hallway, slipped Into the adjoining
room, and finding, as he had imagined, a door between the two, applied
his eye to the keyhole.

This might mean nothing, and it might mean everything. He saw Mrs.
Langmore's son moving around the dressing room precisely as he had
moved around the library. He heard the bureau drawers opened and shut,
and then heard the squeak of a small writing desk that stood in a
corner, as the leaf was turned down. Then came a rattle of papers and
a sudden subdued exclamation. The desk was closed again, and the man
came out of the room, leaving the hall door partly open.

"Whatever he was looking for, he must have found it," reasoned the
detective. "Now, what was it?"

He waited in the hallway and heard Thomas Ostrello enter the dining
room. A minute later came the rattle of dishes. Then Mrs. Morse
confronted him.

"Back again, I see," she said rather sharply.

"Yes; I wish to have another talk with Miss Langmore," he returned,
and, brushing her aside, knocked on the girl's door, and was admitted.
The woman pursed up her lips.

"How very important some of those city lawyers are," she muttered.
"Think they know it all, I guess. Well, he'll have a job clearing her,
if what Coroner Busby says is true."

"Oh, I did not know you were coming back!" exclaimed Margaret. "Has
anything happened?"

"I want to know something about this, Miss Langmore," and he brought
out the torn and wet shirtwaist. "Is it yours?"

"Oh, certainly; but where did it come from? And it is all torn, too!
It was almost new when I had it on last!"

"When was that?"

The girl thought for a moment, and then turned pale.

"On the morning that--that--"

"That the tragedy occurred?"

"Yes. I don't know what made me put it on, but I did."

"And when did you take it off?"

"Why, let me see. Some time in the afternoon, I think. I--I fainted,
and it got dirty, and so I put on another and threw this in the clothes
closet."

"Are you certain you put it in the clothes closet?"

"Positive. Where did you find it?"

"Never mind that just now. Do you keep your shoes in that closet?"

"I do. But why--"

"Will you kindly see if all of your shoes are there?"

The girl ran over, opened the closet door, and began an immediate
exami