fore quite ready to answer the question
you have so openly broached. Not that my answer has any bearing upon
the point you wish to make, but because it is your due and my
pleasure. I did visit the Moore house, as I certainly had every
right to do. The property was my wife's, and it was for my interest
to learn, if I could, the secret of its many crimes."

"Ah!"

Mr. Jeffrey looked quickly up. "You think that an odd thing for me
to do?"

"At night. Yes."

"Night is the time for such work. I did not care to be seen
pottering around there in daylight."

"No? Yet it would have been so much easier. You would not have
had to buy candles or carry a pistol or--"

"I did not carry a pistol. The only pistol carried there was the
one with which my demented wife chose to take her life. I do not
understand this allusion."

"It grew out of a misunderstanding of the situation, Mr. Jeffrey;
excuse me if I supposed you would be likely to provide yourself
with some means of defense in venturing alone upon the scene of
so many mysterious deaths."

"I took no precaution."

"And needed none, I suppose."

"And needed none."

"When was this visit paid, Mr. Jeffrey? Before or after your wife
pulled the trigger which ended her life? You need not hesitate to
answer."

"I do not." The elegant gentleman before us had acquired a certain
fierceness. "Why should I? Certainly, you don't think that I was
there at the same time she was. It was not on the same night, even.
So much the walls should have told you and probably did, or my
wife's uncle, Mr. David Moore. Was he not your informant?"

"No; Mr. Moore has failed to call our attention to this fact. Did
you meet Mr. Moore during the course of your visit to a neighborhood
over which he seems to hold absolute sway?"

"Not to my knowledge. But his house is directly opposite, and as
he has little to do but amuse himself with what he can see from his
front window, I concluded that he might have observed me going in."

"You entered by the front door, then?"

"How else?"

"And on what night?"

Mr. Jeffrey made an effort. These questions were visibly harassing
him.

"The night before the one--the one which ended all my earthly
happiness," he added in a low voice.

Coroner Z. cast a glance at me. I remembered the lack of dust on
the nest of little tables from which the upper one had been drawn
forward to hold the candelabrum, and gently shook my head. The