is arms."

"A pious act. Did he recognize it?"

"I cannot say. I had my fainting wife to look after. She occupied all my
thoughts."

"I see, and you carried her out and were so absorbed in caring for her
you did not observe Mr. Adams's valet----"

"He's innocent, sir. Whatever people may think, he had nothing to do
with this crime----"

"You did not observe him, I say, standing in the doorway and watching
you?"

Now the inspector knew that Bartow had not been standing there, but at
the loophole above; but the opportunity for entrapping the witness was
too good to lose.

Mr. Adams was caught in the trap, or so one might judge from the beads
of perspiration which at that moment showed themselves on his pale
forehead. But he struggled to maintain the stand he had taken, crying
hotly:

"But that man is crazy, and deaf-and-dumb besides! or so the papers give
out. Surely his testimony is valueless. You would not confront me with
him?"

"We confront you with no one. We only asked you a question. You did not
observe the valet, then?"

"No, sir."

"Or understand the mystery of the colored lights?"

"No, sir."

"Or of the plate of steel and the other contrivances with which your
brother enlivened his solitude?"

"I do not follow you, sir." But there was a change in his tone.

"I see," said the inspector, "that the complications which have
disturbed us and made necessary this long delay in the collection of
testimony have not entered into the crime as described by you. Now this
is possible; but there is still a circumstance requiring explanation; a
little circumstance, which is, nevertheless, one of importance, since
your wife mentioned it to you as soon as she became conscious. I allude
to the half dozen or more words which were written by your brother
immediately preceding his death. The paper on which they were written
has been found, and that it was a factor in your quarrel is evident,
since she regretted that it had been left behind you, and he--Do you
know where we found this paper?"

The eyes which young Adams raised at this interrogatory had no
intelligence in them. The sight of this morsel of paper seemed to have
deprived him in an instant of all the faculties with which he had been
carrying on this unequal struggle. He shook his head, tried to reach out
his hand, but failed to grasp the scrap of paper which the inspector
held out. Then he burst into a loud cry:

"Enough! I cannot hold out, with n