te, and, looking up, I met
Sweetwater's eye.

It was quietly apologetic.

"I only wished to congratulate you," said he, "on the conclusion of a
case in which I know you are highly interested." Lifting his hat, he
nodded affably and was gone before I could recover from my stupor.

It was for Clifton to show his indignation. I was past all feeling.
Farce as an after-piece never appealed to me.

Would I have considered it farce if I could have heard the words which
this detective was at that moment whispering into the district
attorney's ears:

"Do you want to know who throttled Adelaide Cumberland? It was not her
brother; it was not her lover; it was her old and trusted coachman."

XXXV

"AS IF IT WERE A MECCA"

--I have within my mind
A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks
Which I will practise.

_Merchant of Venice_.

"Give me your reasons. They must be excellent ones, Sweetwater, or you
would not risk making a second mistake in a case of this magnitude and
publicity."

"Mr. Fox, they are excellent. But you shall judge of them. From the
moment Miss Carmel Cumberland overthrew the very foundations of our case
by her remarkable testimony, I have felt that my work was only half done.
It was a strain on credulity to believe Arthur guilty of a crime so
prefaced, and the alternative which Mr. Moffat believed in, which you
were beginning to believe in, and perhaps are allowing yourself to
believe in even now, never appealed to me.

"I allude to the very natural suspicion that the act beheld by your man
Clarke was a criminal act, and that Ranelagh is the man really
responsible for Miss Cumberland's death. Some instinct held me back from
this conclusion, as well as the incontrovertible fact that he could have
had no hand in carrying that piece of broken bottle into the Cumberland
stable, or of dropping his engagement ring in the suggestive place where
it was found. Where, then, should I look for the unknown, the
unsuspected third party? Among the ten other persons who dropped
something into that casket.

"Most of these were children, but I made the acquaintance of every one. I
spent most of my Sunday that way; then, finding no clouded eye among
them, I began a study of the Cumberland servants, naturally starting with
Zadok. For two hours I sat at his stable fire, talking and turning him
inside out, as only we detectives know how. I found him actually
overwhelmed with grief; not the grief of a sa