"Yes," repeated Edwards thoughtfully, "a peach."

A sudden swift flash of intuition, an inspiration, leapt into the young
reporter's brain.

This girl, this peach, at all hazards he must save her life.

CHAPTER III

I MUST BUY A BOOK ON BILLIARDS

Kent turned to the Inspector. "Take me into the house," he said. Edwards
led the way. The interior of the handsome mansion seemed undisturbed. "I
see no sign of a struggle here," said Kent.

"No," answered the Inspector gloomily. "We can find no sign of a
struggle anywhere. But, then, we never do."

He opened for the moment the door of the stately drawing-room. "No sign
of a struggle there," he said. The closed blinds, the draped furniture,
the covered piano, the muffled chandelier, showed absolutely no sign of
a struggle.

"Come upstairs to the billiard-room," said Edwards. "The body has been
removed for the inquest, but nothing else is disturbed."

They went upstairs. On the second floor was the billiard-room, with a
great English table in the centre of it. But Kent had at once dashed
across to the window, an exclamation on his lips. "Ha! ha!" he said,
"what have we here?"

The Inspector shook his head quietly. "The window," he said in a
monotonous, almost sing-song tone, "has apparently been opened from the
outside, the sash being lifted with some kind of a sharp instrument. The
dust on the sill outside has been disturbed as if by a man of
extraordinary agility lying on his stomach----Don't bother about that,
Mr. Kent. It's _always_ there."

"True," said Kent. Then he cast his eyes upward, and again an
involuntary exclamation broke from him. "Did you see that trap-door?" he
asked.

"We did," said Edwards. "The dust around the rim has been disturbed. The
trap opens into the hollow of the roof. A man of extraordinary dexterity
might open the trap with a billiard cue, throw up a fine manila rope,
climb up the rope and lie there on his stomach.

"No use," continued the Inspector. "For the matter of that, look at this
huge old-fashioned fireplace. A man of extraordinary precocity could
climb up the chimney. Or this dumb-waiter on a pulley, for serving
drinks, leading down into the maids' quarters. A man of extreme
indelicacy might ride up and down in it."

"Stop a minute," said Kent. "What is the meaning of that hat?"

A light gossamer hat, gay with flowers, hung on a peg at the side of the
room.

"We thought of that," said Edwards, "and we have left