ll, well! that
points nearer home, anyway, and it'll be something to go on.... What's
that? A clue? Well, perhaps, and perhaps not. Anyhow, it's not clue
enough at present to hang any ideas on. But the stiletto's done the
thing in one instance, and the air-pistol in the other. But how?--but
where?--but----" Then he whirled around suddenly and stood a moment
looking at the spinning wheel as though, of a sudden, it had actually
come to life of its own accord, and then darting forward scanned the
spindle. "H'm. Perhaps not the stiletto--perhaps _this_, and the
peasant-girl story to make a cloak of! The points are much the
same--stiletto or spindle? But--which?"

"What the dickens are you mumbling over?" threw in Mr. Narkom at this
juncture, as Cleek stood surveying this instrument of a by-gone year,
and pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger thoughtfully the
while. "Spindle? You don't suppose the spindle of _that_ thing could
have anything to do with it, eh?"

"Stranger things have happened, my dear friend, though I'm inclined to
think that in this case they have not!" responded Cleek serenely. "The
spindle theory is thin--deuced thin. But it's often in the thinnest
material that the thickest things are hid.... Now, if we could only find
the bloodstained article with which the stiletto was wiped, we'd settle
that question once and for all. I-- Gad! yes, I remember now! I'll ask
her later on what they were. H'm--ah! That's possibly where it is."

But Mr. Narkom's patience was running a close race with his curiosity,
and both in the same direction. He gave an exasperated sigh and rubbed
the top of his bald head disconsolately.

"You're the most amazin' beggar," he gave out finally, in a tense voice.
"Mumbling away like a lunatic, of laundry-bills and spinning wheels and
'crowns and anchors' which are 'inmates of village post-offices,' and I
don't know what all! If I didn't know something about you, I'd say
you'd gone suddenly balmy, and light out for little old London before
you turned your hand on _me_! But you might let a chap have an
inkling----"

"When you've been in this house as long as I have, you'll have more than
an inkling--you'll probably _know_," returned Cleek with a little laugh.
"But, look here, my friend, we've got to get the body out of
here--presto!--or we'll be having the ladies fainting away and upsetting
the apple cart with a vengeance! They're due in here inside of a quarter
of an hour, wh