he: "his trunks were already packed and his bag nearly
so. There were a few things lying about the room which were put into
the latter, but I saw nothing but what was familiar to me among them;
at least, I think not; perhaps we had better look through his trunk and
see. I have not had the heart to open it since I came back."

As this was exactly what I wished, I said as much, and she led me into a
small room, against the wall of which stood a trunk with a traveling-bag
on top of it. Opening the latter, she spread the contents out on the
trunk.

"I know all these things," she sadly mur-mured, the tears welling in her
eyes.

"This?" I inquired, lifting up a bit of coiled wire with two or three
little rings dangling from it.

"No; why, what is that?"

"It looks like a puzzle of some kind."

"Then it is of no consequence. My husband was forever amusing himself
over some such contrivance. All his friends knew how well he liked these
toys and frequently sent them to him. This one evidently reached him in
Philadelphia."

Meanwhile I was eying the bit of wire curiously. It was undoubtedly a
puzzle, but it had appendages to it that I did not understand.

"It is more than ordinarily complicated," I observed, moving the rings
up and down in a vain endeavor to work them off.

"The better he would like it," said she.

I kept on working with the rings. Suddenly I gave a painful start. A
little prong in the handle of the toy had started out and pricked me.

"You had better not handle it," said I, and laid it down. But the next
minute I took it up again and put it in my pocket. The prick made by
this treacherous bit of mechanism was in or near the same place on my
thumb as the one I had noticed on the hand of the deceased Mr. Holmes.

There was a fire in the room, and before proceeding further, I
cauterized that prick with the end of a red-hot poker. Then I made my
adieux to Mrs. Holmes and went immediately to a chemist friend of mine.

"Test the end of this bit of steel for me," said I. "I have reason to
believe it carries with it a deadly poison."

He took the toy, promised to subject it to every test possible and let
me know the result. Then I went home. I felt ill, or imagined that I
did, which under the circumstances was almost as bad.

Next day, however, I was quite well, with the exception of a certain
inconvenience in my thumb. But not till the following week did I
receive the chemist's report. It overthrew my