n with Siders that would cause the name of my ward to be
mentioned. After a few more questions the commissioner left me. I was
busy all the afternoon, and did not return to my home until later than
usual. I found my aunt somewhat worried because Miss Roemer had left the
house immediately after our early dinner, and had not yet returned. We
both knew the girl to be still grieving over her broken engagement,
and we dreaded the effect this last dreadful news might have on her.
We supposed, however, that she had gone to spend the afternoon with a
friend, and were rather glad to be spared the necessity of telling her
at once what had happened. I had scarcely finished my supper, when
the door bell rang, and to my astonishment the Mayor of Grunau was
announced, accompanied by the same Police Commissioner who had visited
me in my office that morning. The Mayor was an old friend of mine and
his deeply grave face showed me that something serious had occurred. It
was indeed serious! and for some minutes I could not grasp the meaning
of the commissioner's questions. Finally I realised with a tremendous
shock that I--I myself was under suspicion of the murder of John Siders.
The description given by the old servant of the man who had visited
Siders the evening before, the very clothes that I wore, my hat and the
trousers spotted by the purple ink, led to my identification as this
mysterious visitor. The servant had let me in but she had not seen me go
out.

"Then I discovered--when confronted suddenly with my own revolver which
had been found on the floor of the room, some distance from the body of
the dead man, that this same revolver had been identified as mine by my
ward, Eleonora Roemer, who had been to the police station at G---- in
the early afternoon hours. Some impulse of loyalty to her dead lover,
some foolish feminine fear that I might have spoken against him in my
earlier interviews with the commissioner had driven the girl to this
step. A few questions sufficed to draw from her the story of her secret
engagement, of its ending, and of my quarrel with John. I will say for
her that I am certain she did not realise that all these things were
calculated to cast suspicion on me. The poor girl is too unused to the
ways of police courts, to the devious ways of the law, to realise what
she was doing. The sight of my revolver broke her down completely
and she acknowledged that it was mine. That is all. Except that I was
arrested