death by means of a stab from some unknown weapon in the hand
of a person also unknown, but no weapon was ever found, nor was it ever
settled how the attack could have been made or the murderer escape under
the conditions described. The woman was poor, her friends few, and the
case seemingly inexplicable. So after creating some excitement by its
peculiarities, it fell of its own weight. But I remembered it, and in
many a spare hour have tried to see my way through the no-thoroughfare
it presented. But quite in vain. To-day, the road is as blind as ever,
but--" here Sweetwater's face sharpened and his eyes burned as he leaned
closer and closer to the older detective--"but this second case, so
unlike the first in non-essentials but so exactly like it in just those
points which make the mystery, has dropped a thread from its tangled
skein into my hand, which may yet lead us to the heart of both. Can you
guess--have you guessed--what this thread is? But how could you without
the one clew I have not given you? Mr. Gryce, the tenement where
this occurred is the same I visited the other night in search of Mr.
Brotherson. And the man characterised at that time by the janitor as the
best, the quietest and most respectable tenant in the whole building,
and the one you remember whose window opened directly opposite the spot
where this woman lay dead, was Mr. Dunn himself, or, in other words, our
late redoubtable witness, Mr. Orlando Brotherson."

XII. Mr. GRYCE FINDS AN ANTIDOTE FOR OLD AGE

"I thought I should make you sit up. I really calculated upon doing so,
sir. Yes, I have established the plain fact that this Brotherson was
near to, if not in the exact line of the scene of crime in each of these
extraordinary and baffling cases. A very odd coincidence, is it not?"
was the dry conclusion of our eager young detective.

"Odd enough if you are correct in your statement. But I thought it was
conceded that the man Brotherson was not personally near,--was not even
in the building at the time of the woman's death in Hicks Street; that
he was out and had been out for hours, according to the janitor."

"And so the janitor thought, but he didn't quite know his man. I'm
not sure that I do. But I mean to make his acquaintance and make it
thoroughly before I let him go. The hero--well, I will say the possible
hero of two such adventures--deserves some attention from one so
interested in the abnormal as myself."

"Sweetwater, how