er. Probably we shall never know the whole truth about it;
but what we can know and do, if you are still holding to our compact and
viewing this crime in the light of Mr. Durand's explanations, is that it
made a change in her and made her anxious to rid herself of the diamond.
It has been decided that the hurried scrawl should read, 'Take warning.
He means to be at the ball. Expect trouble if you do not give him the
diamond,' or something to that effect. But why was it passed up to her
unfinished? Was the haste too great? I hardly think so. I believe in
another explanation, which points with startling directness to the
possibility that the person referred to in this broken communication was
not Mr. Durand, but one whom I need not name; and that the reason you
have failed to find the messenger, of whose appearance you have received
definite information, is that you have not looked among the servants
of a certain distinguished visitor in town. Oh," I burst forth with
feverish volubility, as I saw the inspector's lips open in what could
not fail to be a sarcastic utterance, "I know what you feel tempted to
reply. Why should a servant deliver a warning against his own master? If
you will be patient with me you will soon see; but first I wish to make
it clear that Mrs. Fairbrother, having received this warning just before
Mr. Durand appeared in the alcove,--reckless, scheming woman that she
was!--sought to rid herself of the object against which it was directed
in the way we have temporarily accepted as true. Relying on her arts,
and possibly misconceiving the nature of Mr. Durand's interest in her,
she hands over the diamond hidden in her rolled-up gloves, which
he, without suspicion, carries away with him, thus linking himself
indissolubly to a great crime of which another was the perpetrator. That
other, or so I believe from my very heart of hearts, was the man I saw
leaning against the wall at the foot of the alcove a few minutes before
I passed into the supper-room."

I stopped with a gasp, hardly able to meet the stern and forbidding look
with which the inspector sought to restrain what he evidently considered
the senseless ravings of a child. But I had come there to speak, and
I hastily proceeded before the rebuke thus expressed could formulate
itself into words.

"I have some excuse for a declaration so monstrous. Perhaps I am the
only person who can satisfy you in regard to a certain fact about which
you have expre