in
anything that might be regarded as a clew.

In the end I fell to musing over a bar of common laundry soap on the
stationary wash-stand. It was impossible not to contrast this humble
detergent--for it was of a bigness and coarse yellowness to suggest the
largest possible quantity for the smallest possible price--with the
dead man's wealth, and to wonder a little at such petty economies as
were signified by it, by the paraffin candles, the absence of servants,
and by some other details of the _menage_ which perhaps I have already
mentioned.

I recalled, with a smile, that Burke had smelled of laundry soap, and
that on the wash-stand in Maillot's room there had been no soap at all.
Well, there are some queer ways of utilizing wealth; but I contend
that, of all of them, to deny oneself the commonest comforts of
existence is the queerest and the hardest to understand. A philosophy
of living is involved utterly incomprehensible to me.

Passing through the bath room, I emerged upon the landing of the rear
stairs. Across the landing was another small room, which contained,
besides a dust-mantled sewing-machine, nothing but some broken and
worn-out furniture.

I followed the stairway to the bottom, and about half-way down found a
bit of flattened paraffin about the size of my thumb nail.

After re-ascending these stairs I stood once more looking idly down
over the balustrade, going over in my mind the parts of the puzzle
which had been set for me to bring together into an intelligible and
perfectly rounded whole, and wondering what I would succeed in making
of it all. For a while I was aware of a strange lack of confidence in
myself, of a feeling of uncertainty. Had I been negligent in not
arresting both Maillot and Burke? It seemed the simplest and most
direct method of proceeding; it would be no difficult matter to fasten
the crime on one or the other, or both of them; why should I go behind
the few plain details which lay so invitingly before me?

Perhaps the intrusion of a pair of blue eyes into the midst of my
cogitations had much to do with my irresolution. Somehow I was
extremely desirous of winning their approval. The possibility that I
might win more did not enter my thoughts, because, I reflected rather
dismally, the owner of the blue eyes moved in a sphere in which I had
neither part nor parcel.

Still, my determination to solve the mystery of Felix Page's death was
inextricably interwoven with an