oung man's
absence saved her the work of fixing up his room that morning and
allowed her to get to her reading earlier than usual. When she had put
the pot of soup on the fire, she sat down by the window, adjusted her
big spectacles and began to read. To her great delight she discovered
that the paper she held in her hand bore the date of the previous
afternoon. In spite of the good intentions of her friend the grocer,
it was not always that she could get a paper of so recent date, and she
began to read with doubled anticipation of pleasure.

She did not waste time on the leading articles, for she understood
little about politics. The serial stories were a great delight to
her, or would have been, if she had ever been able to follow them
consecutively. But her principal joy were the everyday happenings of
varied interest which she found in the news columns. To-day she was so
absorbed in the reading of them that the soup pot began to boil over
and send out rivulets down onto the stove. Ordinarily this would have
shocked Mrs. Klingmayer, for the neatness of her pots and pans was the
one great care of her life. But now, strange to relate, she paid no
attention to the soup, nor to the smell and the smoke that arose from
the stove. She had just come upon a notice in the paper which took her
entire attention. She read it through three times, and each time with
growing excitement. This is what she read:

MURDER IN HIETZING

This morning at six o'clock the body of a man about 30 years
old was discovered in a lane in Hietzing. The man must have
been dead many hours. He had been shot from behind. The dead
man was tall and thin, with brown eyes, brown hair and moustache.
The letters L. W. were embroidered in his underwear. There was
nothing else discovered on him that could reveal his identity.
His watch and purse were not in his pockets: presumably they had
been taken by the murderer. A strange fact is that in one of
his pockets--a hidden pocket it is true--there was the sum of
300 guldens in bills.

This was the notice which made Mrs. Klingmayer neglect the soup pot.

Finally the old woman stood up very slowly, threw a glance at the stove
and opened the window mechanically. Then she lifted the pots from the
fire and set them on the outer edge of the range. And then she did
something that ordinarily would have shocked her economical soul--she
poured water on the fire to put