man could relieve him.

The flight of stairs above the landing gave upon a hall
which--excepting in the front, where there was a large diamond-paned
window--entirely surrounded the stair-well, and was continued by a
lateral passage connecting the gables or wings.

[Illustration: Diagram of second floor]

One leaning over the balustrade at the top looked down upon the
ascending stairs, the balcony midway up, and a good portion of the
spacious hall below. The lateral hall gave access to all the rooms on
the second floor.

An examination of the appended plan, although drawn from memory and by
fingers to which such a task is strange, will give a better idea of the
_locus criminis_ than any amount of verbal description alone can
accomplish. So the reader, if he will consult the chart from time to
time as the narrative proceeds, will escape much confusion in his
attempts to follow the movements of the different actors.

Arriving at the head of the stairs, I first gave my attention to the
_etagere_. This piece of furniture was simply a pedestal of shelves,
without sides, front, or back, so that to tilt it in any direction far
out of the perpendicular would mean to spill its burden of old
newspapers and periodicals.

Maybe it would have been convenient in a music-room, but situated where
it was it was certainly in the way of anybody using the stairs. If a
person unfamiliar with the house should ascend the stairs in the dark,
the instant he turned at the top he must almost inevitably collide with
it--a circumstance which I was to have brought home to me a few nights
later, with consequences which missed being fatal by only the
slenderest of margins. But after all, I concluded, if a stranger
missed it only by a miracle it might have served a double purpose here;
no one slept in the second story, ordinarily, and it would make a good
burglar alarm, as well as a repository for the iron candlestick and the
sea-shell match receptacle.

From the point where it now leaned against the balusters back to the
lateral corridor or hall, there were many little details to arrest and
stimulate my curiosity. The carpet between these two points plainly
showed signs of a recent struggle, and at the western vortex of the
angle formed by the balustrade surrounding the stair-well, innumerable
drops of congealed paraffin were scattered widely over the floor.

And the railing itself also held a record. Stout as were the uprights
susta