in its
expression.

She was not disappointed in him. She had expected to see a man, reserved
almost to the point of austerity. And she found his first look even more
awe-compelling than her imagination had pictured; so much so indeed,
that her resolution faltered, and she took a quick step backward; which
seeing, he smiled and her heart and hopes grew warm again. That he could
smile, and smile with absolute sweetness, was her great comfort when
later--But I am introducing you too hurriedly to the catastrophe. There
is much to be told first.

I pass over the preliminaries, and come at once to the moment when
Violet, having listened to a repetition of the full facts, stood with
downcast eyes before these gentlemen, complaining in some alarm to
herself: "They expect me to tell them now and without further search
or parley just where this missing page is. I shall have to balk that
expectation without losing their confidence. But how?"

Summoning up her courage and meeting each inquiring eye with a look
which seemed to carry a different message to each, she remarked very
quietly:

"This is not a matter to guess at. I must have time and I must look a
little deeper into the facts just given me. I presume that the table
I see over there is the one upon which Mr. Upjohn laid the manuscript
during Mr. Spielhagen's unconsciousness."

All nodded.

"Is it--I mean the table--in the same condition it was then? Has nothing
been taken from it except the manuscript?"

"Nothing."

"Then the missing page is not there," she smiled, pointing to its bare
top. A pause, during which she stood with her gaze fixed on the floor
before her. She was thinking and thinking hard.

Suddenly she came to a decision. Addressing Mr. Upjohn she asked if he
were quite sure that in taking the manuscript from Mr. Spielhagen's hand
he had neither disarranged nor dropped one of its pages.

The answer was unequivocal.

"Then," she declared, with quiet assurance and a steady meeting with her
own of every eye, "as the thirteenth page was not found among the others
when they were taken from this table, nor on the persons of either Mr.
Cornell or Mr. Spielhagen, it is still in that inner room."

"Impossible!" came from every lip, each in a different tone. "That room
is absolutely empty."

"May I have a look at its emptiness?" she asked, with a naive glance at
Mr. Van Broecklyn.

"There is positively nothing in the room but the chair Mr. Spielhagen