y, and found one."

"Then, while she was out--?"

"Possibly," Sperry said. "If we start with the hypothesis that she was
lying."

"If she cleaned up here for any reason," I began, and commenced a
desultory examination of the room. Just why I looked behind the bathtub
forces me to an explanation I am somewhat loath to make, but which will
explain a rather unusual proceeding. For some time my wife has felt that
I smoked too heavily, and out of her solicitude for me has limited me
to one cigar after dinner. But as I have been a heavy smoker for years
I have found this a great hardship, and have therefore kept a reserve
store, by arrangement with the housemaid, behind my tub. In self-defence
I must also state that I seldom have recourse to such stealthy measures.

Believing then that something might possibly be hidden there, I made
an investigation, and could see some small objects lying there. Sperry
brought me a stick from the dressing-room, and with its aid succeeded in
bringing out the two articles which were instrumental in starting us on
our brief but adventurous careers as private investigators. One was a
leather razor strop, old and stiff from disuse, and the other a wet bath
sponge, now stained with blood to a yellowish brown.

"She is lying, Sperry," I said. "He fell somewhere else, and she dragged
him to where he was found."

"But--why?"

"I don't know," I said impatiently. "From some place where a man would
be unlikely to kill himself, I daresay. No one ever killed himself, for
instance, in an open hallway. Or stopped shaving to do it."

"We have only Miss Jeremy's word for that," he said, sullenly. "Confound
it, Horace, don't let's bring in that stuff if we can help it."

We stared at each other, with the strop and the sponge between us.
Suddenly he turned on his heel and went back into the room, and a moment
later he called me, quietly.

"You're right," he said. "The poor devil was shaving. He had it half
done. Come and look."

But I did not go. There was a carafe of water in the bathroom, and I
took a drink from it. My hands were shaking. When I turned around I
found Sperry in the hall, examining the carpet with his flash light, and
now and then stooping to run his hand over the floor.

"Nothing here," he said in a low tone, when I had joined him. "At least
I haven't found anything."

IV

How much of Sperry's proceeding with the carpet the governess had seen
I do not know. I glanced