has been searched for papers before we
began, and papers have been burnt. In the search this drawer was
opened--containing, as you see, nothing but a supply of new headed
note-paper. The note-paper was hastily lifted to see if anything else
lay beneath, and here, on the bottom sheet, these finger-marks were left
in that same adhesive, freely marking red--a sort of stuff that sticks
to and marks whatever it touches. The hand that lifted that paper was
the hand that impressed that ghastly mark; and the hand that left its
print on this black varnish was Mr. Everard Myatt's! Now compare the
two!"

Plummer had snatched the lens, and was narrowly comparing the marks ere
Hewitt had well finished speaking.

"They are!" he cried, as the rector bent excitedly over him. "They are
the same! See--forefinger and middle finger--the same, every line!"

"I needn't tell you," pursued Hewitt, "certainly I needn't tell Plummer,
that that is the most certain and scientific method of identification
known. The police know that--and use it. But now there is some more. You
saw me take that charred paper from the fire. Sometimes words may be
read on charred paper--it depends on the paper and the ink. Most of the
cinders were too much broken to yield any information, though we may try
again by daylight. But one was suggestive. See it!" Hewitt very
carefully pulled out the flat drawer that held the cinders.

"You see," he went on, "that one--this--is different from the rest. It
has retained its original form better, and has been less broken, because
of being of thicker paper. It is a crumpled envelope. Look at the
flap--it has never been closed down. Moreover, on that same flap you may
read in embossed letters, still visible, part of the name of this house.
Plain inference--this was an envelope intended for a letter never sent,
and so crumpled up and dropped into the waste-paper basket. But why
should such an apparently unimportant thing as that be carefully brought
from the waste-paper basket and burnt? Somebody was anxious that the
smallest scrap of paper evidencing a certain correspondence should be
destroyed. But look closely at the front of the envelope--the ink shows
a rather lighter grey than the paper. The address is incomplete--at any
rate, no more than some of the first line and a little of the second is
at all visible now; but it is plain that the first line begins with an
E. The letters immediately following are not distinct, but n