medieval streets.

This made the first mystery.

The second was the as yet unexplainable presence, on the alcove floor,
of two broken coffee-cups, which no waiter nor any other person, in
fact, admitted having carried there. The tray, which had fallen from
Peter Mooney's hand,--the waiter who had been the first to give the
alarm of murder,--had held no cups, only ices. This was a fact, proved.
But the handles of two cups had been found among the debris,--cups which
must have been full, from the size of the coffee stain left on the rug
where they had fallen.

In reading this I remembered that Mr. Durand had mentioned stepping on
some broken pieces of china in his escape from the fatal scene, and,
struck with this confirmation of a theory which was slowly taking form
in my own mind, I passed on to the next paragraph, with a sense of
expectation.

The result was a surprise. Others may have been told, I was not, that
Mrs. Fairbrother had received a communication from outside only a few
minutes previous to her death. A Mr. Fullerton, who had preceded Mr.
Durand in his visit to the alcove, owned to having opened the window for
her at some call or signal from outside, and taken in a small piece of
paper which he saw lifted up from below on the end of a whip handle. He
could not see who held the whip, but at Mrs. Fairbrother's entreaty he
unpinned the note and gave it to her. While she was puzzling over it,
for it was apparently far from legible, he took another look out in time
to mark a figure rush from below toward the carriage drive. He did not
recognize the figure nor would he know it again. As to the nature of the
communication itself he could say nothing, save that Mrs. Fairbrother
did not seem to be affected favorably by it. She frowned and was looking
very gloomy when he left the alcove. Asked if he had pulled the curtains
together after closing the window, he said that he had not; that she had
not requested him to do so.

This story, which was certainly a strange one, had been confirmed by the
testimony of the coachman who had lent his whip for the purpose. This
coachman, who was known to be a man of extreme good nature, had seen no
harm in lending his whip to a poor devil who wished to give a telegram
or some such hasty message to the lady sitting just above them in a
lighted window. The wind was fierce and the snow blinding, and it
was natural that the man should duck his head, but he remembered his
appearanc