fice. He was quite upset by the outcry
which came from this room at an unhappy moment during the funeral."

"I know. It was my fault; I opened the door just for an instant, and in
that instant my patient broke through her torpor and spoke."

She had drawn him in, by this time, and, after another glance at her
patient, softly closed the door behind him.

"I have nothing to report," said she, "but the one sentence
everybody heard."

Sweetwater took in the little memorandum book and pencil which hung at
her side, and understood her position and extraordinary amenability to
his wishes. Unconsciously, a low exclamation escaped him. He was young
and had not yet sunk the man entirely in the detective.

"A cruel necessity to watch so interesting a patient, for anything but
her own good," he remarked. Yet, because he was a detective as well as a
man, his eye went wandering all over the room as he spoke until it fell
upon a peculiar-looking cabinet or closet, let into the wall directly
opposite the bed. "What's that?" he asked.

"I don't know; I can't make it out, and I don't like to ask."

Sweetwater examined it for a moment from where he stood; then crossed
over, and scrutinised it more particularly. It was a unique specimen.
What it lacked in height--it could not have measured more than a foot
from the bottom to the top--it made up in length, which must have
exceeded five feet. The doors, of which it had two, were both tightly
locked; but as they were made of transparent glass, the objects behind
them were quite visible. It was the nature of these objects which made
the mystery. The longer Sweetwater examined them, the less he understood
the reason for their collection, much less for their preservation in a
room which in all other respects, expressed the quintessence of taste.

At one end he saw a stuffed canary, not perched on a twig, but lying
prone on its side. Near it was a doll, with scorched face and limbs
half-consumed. Next this, the broken pieces of a china bowl and what
looked like the torn remnants of some very fine lace. Further along, his
eye lighted on a young girl's bonnet, exquisite in colour and nicety of
material, but crushed out of all shape and only betraying its identity by
its dangling strings. The next article, in this long array of totally
unhomogeneous objects, was a metronome, with its pendulum wrenched half
off and one of its sides lacking. He could not determine the character of
what came ne