to do so and, if possible,
to clear up mysteries which provoke the worst kind of conjecture.
It is time. The ideas advanced by the papers foster superstition;
and superstition is the devil. Go and tell my man out there that
I am going to K Street. You may say 'we' if you like," he added
with a humor more welcome to me than any serious concession.

Did I feel set up by this? Rather.

Mr. Jeffrey was expecting us. This was evident from his first look,
though the attempt he made at surprise was instantaneous and very
well feigned. Indeed, I think he was in a constant state of
apprehension during these days and that no inroad of the police
would have astonished him. But expectation does not preclude dread;
indeed it tends to foster it, and dread was in his heart. This he
had no power to conceal.

"To what am I indebted for this second visit from you?" he asked of
Coroner Z., with an admirable presence of mind. "Are you not yet
satisfied with what we have been able to tell you of my poor wife's
unhappy end?"

"We are not," was the plain response. "There are some things you
have not attempted to explain, Mr. Jeffrey. For instance, why you
went to the Moore house previous to your being called there by the
death of your wife."

It was a shot that told; an arrow which found its mark. Mr.
Jeffrey flushed, then turned pale, rallied and again lost himself
in a maze of conflicting emotions from which he only emerged to say:

"How do you know that I was there? Have I said so; or do those old
walls babble in their sleep?"

"Old walls have been known to do this," was the grave reply.
"Whether they had anything to say in this case is at present quite
immaterial. That you were where I charge you with being is evident
from your own manner. May I then ask if you have anything to say
about this visit. When a person has died under such peculiar
circumstances as Mrs. Jeffrey, everything bearing upon the case is
of interest to the coroner."

I was sorry he added that last sentence; sorry that he felt obliged
to qualify his action by anything savoring of apology; for the time
spent in its utterance afforded his agitated hearer an opportunity
not only of collecting himself but of preparing an answer for which
he would not have been ready an instant before.

"Mrs. Jeffrey's death was a strange one," her husband admitted with
tardy self-control. "I find myself as much at a loss to understand
it as you do, and am there