r I actually pitied the old
man in his hour of humiliation, "other girls wear gray besides Lena. It
was the woman of the Hotel D---- who played this trick in Mr. Van
Burnam's office. Lena was not out of my house that day."

I had never thought Mr. Gryce feeble, though I knew he was over seventy
if not very near the octogenarian age. But he drew up a chair at this
and hastily sat down.

"Tell me about this other girl," said he.

But before I repeat what I said to him, I must explain by what reasoning
I had arrived at the conclusion I have just mentioned. That Ruth Oliver
was the visitor in Mr. Van Burnam's office there was but little reason
to doubt; that her errand was one in connection with the rings was
equally plain. What else would have driven her from her bed when she was
hardly able to stand, and sent her in a state of fever, if not delirium,
down town to this office?

She feared having these rings found in her possession, and she also
cherished a desire to throw whatever suspicion was attached to them upon
the man who was already compromised. She may have thought it was
Howard's desk she approached, and she may have known it to be
Franklin's. On that point I was in doubt, but the rest was clear to me
from the moment Mr. Gryce mentioned the girl in gray; and even the spot
where she had kept them in the interim since the murder was no longer an
unsolved mystery to me. Her emotion when I touched her knitting-work
and the shreds of unravelled wool I had found lying about after her
departure, had set my wits working, and I comprehended now _that they
had been wound up in the ball of yarn I had so carelessly handled_.

But what had I to say to Mr. Gryce in answer to his question. Much; and
seeing that further delay was injudicious, I began my story then and
there. Prefacing my tale with the suspicions I had always had of Mrs.
Boppert, I told them of my interview with that woman and of the valuable
clue she had given me by confessing that she had let Mrs. Van Burnam
into the house prior to the visit of the couple who entered there at
midnight. Knowing what an effect this must produce upon Mr. Gryce,
utterly unprepared for it as he was, I looked for some burst of anger on
his part, or at least some expression of self-reproach. But he only
broke a second piece off my little filigree basket, and, totally
unconscious of the demolition he was causing, cried out with true
professional delight:

"Well! well! I've always