was it written?"

"My brother--Mr. Ward."

Britz tried to guess the hidden significance of the note which had
impelled this woman to a midnight visit to Beard's house. She must have
known, just as Britz had ascertained earlier in the day, that Beard was
a bachelor, occupying the private dwelling with a lone servant. Surely
she would not have been guilty of so unconventional an act except
through desperate necessity.

"That letter--will it throw any light on Mr. Whitmore's death?" asked
Britz eagerly.

"Not the slightest," was her disappointing reply. "It has absolutely
nothing to do with it."

"Then you won't mind identifying it if I find it in my search of the
premises?"

"Not in the least--that is, on one condition," said she.

"And that condition--what is it?"

"Your promise that the letter will not be made public."

It was a condition to which the detective could readily agree. It was no
part of his duty to supply the newspapers with the intimate details
associated with every crime. He was habitually reticent toward
reporters, yet he was not unpopular with them. For, besides recognizing
and admiring his unbending honesty, his courage and resourcefulness,
they were aware that on the rare occasions when he took them into his
confidence, they could rely upon his statements as upon a mathematical
certainty. Not in all his career had he ever been known to discuss in
print his theories, or deductions, or half-baked conclusion. In that
respect he differed radically from most of the detective force. Whenever
he had a statement to make, it embodied the solution of the mystery on
which he had been working. It meant that the guilty man was safely
behind the bars and that the evidence against him was complete.

"Confidential communications obtained by me are never made public except
in a courtroom," he informed the woman. "If the letter has no bearing on
Mr. Whitmore's death it will be returned to Mr. Beard."

"But I want it--that's what I came for," she pleaded. "Can't you give it
to me?"

"Not without Mr. Beard's consent," he replied in a tone of finality.
"And then only after I have assured myself of its lack of bearing on the
Whitmore case."

She bestowed on him a glance of such keen disappointment as to provoke a
doubt of the innocence of the missive. But he did not betray what was in
his mind. Instead, he rose to his feet, and, with a polite bow, said:

"I may trust you to wait until I have completed my