ll day, her resort is this room, where
she can see, unobserved, the whole _menage_ and movement in the block
opposite."

"Why did she feel so much interested?"

"Honor bright!" Calvin wrote. "Well, Mrs. Knox was a great admirer of
the late William Zane. They were very intimate--some thought under
engagement to marry. Suddenly she accepted my brother, and old Zane
turned out to be infatuated with his ward. We may call it rivalry and
reminiscence."

"Jer-i-choo-wo!"

Duff Salter, now full of smiles, proffered a pinch of snuff to his host,
who declined it, but set out a bottle of brandy in reciprocal
friendship.

"Go on," indicated Salter to the tablets.

"One morning, just before daybreak, my brother's wife, glancing out of
this window--"

"In this room, you say, before daybreak?"

Calvin looked viciously at Duff Salter, who merely smiled.

"She saw," said Calvin Van de Lear, "an object come out of the trap-door
on Zane's old residence and move under shelter of the ridge of the roof
to the newly-tenanted dwelling in the same block, and there disappear
down the similar trap."

"Jericho! Jericho!--Proceed."

"It was our inference that probably Andrew Zane was making stealthy
visits to Agnes, and we applied a test to her. To our astonishment we
found she had only seen him once since the murder, and that was the
night the bodies were discovered."

"How could you extract that from a self-contained woman like Agnes
Wilt?" asked Duff Salter, deeply interested.

"We got it from Podge Byerly."

"Jerusalem!" exclaimed Duff Salter aloud, knocking over the snuff-box
and forgetting to sneeze. "Mr. Calvin Van de Lear, it is a damned lie."

Calvin locked up with some surprise but more conceit.

"I'm a first-class eavesdropper," he wrote, and held it up on the tablet
to Duff's eyes. "We got the fact from Podge's bed-ridden brother, a
scamp who destroyed his health by excesses and came back on Podge for
support. Knowing how corruptible he was, I got access to him and paid
him out of your funds to wheedle out of Podge all that Lady Agnes told
her. She had no idea that her brother communicated with any person, as
he was unable to walk, and she told him for his amusement secrets she
never dreamed could go out of the house. We corresponded with him by
mail."

"Calvin," wrote Duff Salter, "you never thought of these things
yourself."

"To give the devil his credit, my brother's wife suggested that device."

"Jericho-