ed; "the one
she wore from Haddam; the other was in the order from Altman's."

"She never ordered anything from Altman's," was my uncompromising reply.
"The woman whom I saw enter next door, and who was the same who left the
Hotel D---- with the man in the linen duster, was not Louise Van Burnam.
She was that lady's rival, and let me say it, for I dare to think it,
not only her rival but the prospective taker of her life. O you need not
shake your heads at each other so significantly, gentlemen. I have been
collecting evidence as well as yourselves, and what I have learned is
very much to the point; very much, indeed."

"The deuce you have!" muttered the Inspector, turning away from me; but
Mr. Gryce continued to eye me like a man fascinated.

"Upon what," said he, "do you base these extraordinary assertions? I
should like to hear what that evidence is."

"But first," said I, "I must take a few exceptions to certain points you
consider yourself to have made against Franklin Van Burnam. You believe
him to have committed this crime because you found in a secret drawer of
his desk a letter known to have been in Mrs. Van Burnam's hands the day
she was murdered, and which you, naturally enough, I acknowledge,
conceive he could only have regained by murdering her. But have you not
thought of another way in which he could have obtained it, a perfectly
harmless way, involving no one either in deceit or crime? May it not
have been in the little hand-bag returned by Mrs. Parker on the morning
of the discovery, and may not its crumpled condition be accounted for by
the haste with which Franklin might have thrust it into his secret
drawer at the untoward entrance of some one into his office?"

"I acknowledge that I have not thought of such a possibility," growled
the detective, below his breath, but I saw that his self-satisfaction
had been shaken.

"As for any proof of complicity being given by the presence of the rings
on the hook attached to his desk, I grieve for your sake to be obliged
to dispel that illusion also. Those rings, Mr. Gryce and Mr. Inspector,
were not discovered there by the girl in gray, but taken there; and hung
there at the very moment your spy saw her hand fumbling with the
papers."

"Taken there, and hung there by your maid! By the girl Lena, who has so
evidently been working in _your_ interests! What sort of a confession
are you making, Miss Butterworth?"

"Ah, Mr. Gryce," I gently remonstrated, fo