o much interest. Do you forget
those broken beads;--how he kicked them about and stamped upon them in
his fury? One of them pierced the ball of his foot, and that so sharply
that it not only spurted blood but kept on bleeding with every step he
took. Otherwise, the trail would have been lost after his passage up the
stairs."

"Fine!" There was no irony in the bureau-chief's eye now. "You are
progressing, Miss Strange. Allow me, I pray, to kiss your hand. It is
a liberty I have never taken, but one which would greatly relieve my
present stress of feeling."

She lifted her hand toward him, but it was in gesture, not in
recognition of his homage.

"Thank you," said she, "but I claim no monopoly on deductions so simple
as these. I have not the least doubt that not only yourself but every
member of the force has made the same. But there is a little matter
which may have escaped the police, may even have escaped you. To that
I would now call your attention since through it I have been enabled,
after a little necessary groping, to reach the open. You remember the
one large blotch on the upper floor where the man dropped the wallet?
That blotch, more or less commingled with a fainter one, possessed great
significance for me from the first moment I saw it. How came his foot to
bleed so much more profusely at that one spot than at any other? There
could be but one answer: because here a surprise met him--a surprise
so startling to him in his present state of mind, that he gave a
quick spring backward, with the result that his wounded foot came down
suddenly and forcibly instead of easily as in his previous wary tread.
And what was the surprise? I made it my business to find out, and now
I can tell you that it was the sight of a woman's face staring upon him
from the neighbouring house which he had probably been told was empty.
The shock disturbed his judgment. He saw his crime discovered--his
guilty secret read, and fled in unreasoning panic. He might better have
held on to his wits. It was this display of fear which led me to search
after its cause, and consequently to discover that at this especial hour
more than one person had been in the Shaffer house; that, in fact, a
marriage had been celebrated there under circumstances as romantic as
any we read of in books, and that this marriage, privately carried out,
had been followed by an immediate voyage of the happy couple on one of
the White Star steamers. With the rest you ar