t there was a broad, smooth place
where the soot was quite worn away. The dark-red fire-brick showed
plainly through. Anne passed the bright glow of light across this smooth
patch very slowly. No; the bricks were not loose here. She held the
light closer, gazing with eyes narrowed to the utmost intensity of
vision. There was a little spot, or excrescence, on the brick near the
seam of the corner. She had felt it with her finger-tips as she drew
them lightly back and forth. She had thought this roughness merely a
defect in one of the bricks. Now she touched it again--scraped it with
her nail. Her nail made no sound against it. Then she pressed upon it.
The nail sank in. It was perhaps a bit of putty left by the work-men.
But then putty isn't used for building fireplaces; besides, the fire
would have melted it long ago----

She began to feel all around it. Suddenly something in the angle, in the
seam where the chimney-throat squared, caught her eye. It looked like a
bit of black wire. She picked at it with her nail, and it yielded--like
the string of a tightly strung guitar. All at once it flashed over the
little detective. That rough lump was wax; it fixed the end of this
black string in place. The string was taut, because it was held
so--held by a weight at the other end probably. Anne did not know
anything about the construction of chimney-throats--had she done so, the
solution would have come to her sooner. But she guessed now that there
must be a hollow behind the brickwork that faced her. She slid her hand
up and forward. Yes, there was an empty space behind--the usual
air-chamber in all well-built chimneys of which she had not known. Ah,
now she had it! Carefully, very daintily, little by little, she began to
pull up the fine black silk cord which, as she had guessed, passed from
where its end was fixed in place by that lump of wax or putty down the
back of the chimney-throat. It answered readily. She felt the weight on
its other end scraping against the wall as she drew it up. In another
moment she had it in her hand--a little parcel, wrapped in oiled paper.
As she broke open the paper and looked down at the object in her hand,
her face was a study of elfish triumph and unwilling admiration.

"What couldn't they do to the world, if they were as hideously clever at
everything else as they are at hiding this stuff!" thought Anne Harding,
referring to the tribe of morphinomaniacs as known to her experience.

She se