coming back to see. Granice
suddenly felt himself enveloped in a network of espionage.

As the door closed he threw himself into an armchair and leaned forward
to take a light from Ascham's cigar.

"Tell me about Mrs. Ashgrove," he said, seeming to himself to speak
stiffly, as if his lips were cracked.

"Mrs. Ashgrove? Well, there's not much to TELL."

"And you couldn't if there were?" Granice smiled.

"Probably not. As a matter of fact, she wanted my advice about her
choice of counsel. There was nothing especially confidential in our
talk."

"And what's your impression, now you've seen her?"

"My impression is, very distinctly, THAT NOTHING WILL EVER BE KNOWN."

"Ah--?" Granice murmured, puffing at his cigar.

"I'm more and more convinced that whoever poisoned Ashgrove knew his
business, and will consequently never be found out. That's a capital
cigar you've given me."

"You like it? I get them over from Cuba." Granice examined his own
reflectively. "Then you believe in the theory that the clever criminals
never ARE caught?"

"Of course I do. Look about you--look back for the last dozen
years--none of the big murder problems are ever solved." The lawyer
ruminated behind his blue cloud. "Why, take the instance in your own
family: I'd forgotten I had an illustration at hand! Take old Joseph
Lenman's murder--do you suppose that will ever be explained?"

As the words dropped from Ascham's lips his host looked slowly about
the library, and every object in it stared back at him with a stale
unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at that room! It was
as dull as the face of a wife one has wearied of. He cleared his throat
slowly; then he turned his head to the lawyer and said: "I could explain
the Lenman murder myself."

Ascham's eye kindled: he shared Granice's interest in criminal cases.

"By Jove! You've had a theory all this time? It's odd you never
mentioned it. Go ahead and tell me. There are certain features in the
Lenman case not unlike this Ashgrove affair, and your idea may be a
help."

Granice paused and his eye reverted instinctively to the table drawer in
which the revolver and the manuscript lay side by side. What if he were
to try another appeal to Rose Melrose? Then he looked at the notes
and bills on the table, and the horror of taking up again the lifeless
routine of life--of performing the same automatic gestures another
day--displaced his fleeting vision.

"I haven't a theo