a tour of the room slowly, his dark eyes searching
everywhere. He did not open his lips in the presence of the dead. He
only examined everything, swiftly and yet carefully, opening the door
slowly and closing it just as slowly, in order to see whether it
creaked or not.

It creaked when closed very slowly. The creaking was evidently what
the under-housemaid had heard and believed to be the creaking of
boots. The murderer, finding that it creaked, had probably closed it
by degrees; hence it gave a series of creaks, which to the girl had
sounded in the silence of the night like those of new boots.

Ambler Jevons had, almost at the opening of his inquiry, cleared up
one point which had puzzled us.

When he had concluded his examination of the room and re-covered the
dead face with the sheet, we emerged into the corridor. Then I told
him of the servant's statement.

"Boots!" he echoed in a tone of impatience. "Would a murderer wear
creaking boots? It was the door, of course. It opens noiselessly, but
when closed quietly it creaks. Curious, however, that he should have
risked the creaking and the awakening of the household in order to
close it. He had some strong motive in doing so."

"He evidently had a motive in the crime," I remarked. "If we could
only discover it, we might perhaps fix upon the assassin."

"Yes," he exclaimed, thoughtfully. "But to tell the truth, Ralph, old
chap, the fact which is puzzling me most of all at this moment is that
extraordinary foreboding of evil which you confessed to me the day
before yesterday. You had your suspicions aroused, somehow. Cudgel
your brains, and think what induced that very curious presage of
evil."

"I've tried and tried over again, but I can fix on nothing. Only
yesterday afternoon, when Sir Bernard incidentally mentioned old Mr.
Courtenay, it suddenly occurred to me that the curious excitement
within me had some connection with him. Of course he was a patient,
and I may have studied his case and given a lot of thought to it, but
that wouldn't account for such an oppression as that from which I've
been suffering."

"You certainly did have the blues badly the night before last," he
said frankly. "And by some unaccountable manner your curious feeling
was an intuition of this tragic occurrence. Very odd and mysterious,
to say the least."

"Uncanny, I call it," I declared.

"Yes, I agree with you," he answered. "It is an uncanny affair
altogether. Tell me about t