ly small eyes.

"If they had destroyed that one it would have had some meaning to me,"
commented Pendleton. "But, as it is, I hardly think I follow you."

"The meaning that I find," replied Ashton-Kirk, "lies in the fact that
the pictures violently used were those of General Wayne only. Mark
that fact. That they were deliberately selected for destruction is
beyond question."

"How do you make that out?"

"It is simple. If this were a mere random stripping of the room of its
pictures, all would have suffered. Look," indicating a spot in the
wall, "here is a place where the plaster is broken. A hook had been
driven here to hold one of the portraits; and the breaking of the
plaster shows that some determination was required to tear the picture
down. Yet--next this--is an engraving of an old mansion which remains
untouched. The next four again were portraits of the General, and all
have been demolished."

Pendleton nodded.

"That's true," said he. "Whoever did this was after the Revolutionary
hero alone. But why?"

Ashton-Kirk smiled.

"We'll look into matters a little further," said he. "Perhaps there
are facts to be gathered that will shed some light upon the things
that we have already seen."

They repassed through the other rooms; with his hand upon the frame of
the door leading to the show room, Ashton-Kirk paused.

"Better brace yourself for rather a shocking sight," said he to his
friend.

"Go on," said Pendleton, quietly.

CHAPTER IV

STILLMAN'S THEORY

There were four good-sized windows in the show room, all overlooking
the street. It was a large, square place, and, as Miss Vale had said,
literally stuffed with odd carvings, pottery of a most freakish sort,
and weird bric-a-brac. Two large modern safes stood at one side,
behind a long show case spread with ancient coins. At the end of this
case was a carpeted space, railed in and furnished with a great
flat-topped desk. Upon the floor at the foot of the desk, and with
three separate streams of blood creeping away from it, lay the
huddled, ghastly figure of a man.

Pendleton, though he had been warned, felt his breath catch and his
skin grow cold and damp.

"Heavens!" said he, under his breath. "It's the man whose picture we
saw inside there on the wall."

Even the shock of death could not, so it seemed, drive the sneer from
the thick lips; mockery was frozen in the dead eyes.

"What a beast he must have been," went on Pendleton. "L