oot-heel, bearing also the
combination formula for opening the safe.

The public was familiar with that piece of evidence; it had gone
through every kind of mill of opinion; it made no special sensation. The
evidence of the caretaker who found the formula and of the witnesses who
established it to be in young Ormiston's handwriting, produced little
interest. Mr Cruickshank, in elaborating his theory as to why with the
formula in their hands the depredators still found it necessary to pick
the lock, offered nothing to speculations already current--the duplicate
key with which they had doubtless been enabled to supply themselves
was a clumsy copy and had failed them; that conclusion had been drawn
commonly enough. The next scrap of paper produced by the prosecution was
another matter. It was the mere torn end of a greasy sheet; upon it was
written "Not less than 3,000 net," and it had been found in the turning
out of Ormiston's dressing-table. It might have been anything--a number
of people pursed their lips contemptuously--or it might have been,
without doubt, the fragment of a disreputable transaction that the
prosecuting counsel endeavoured to show it. Here, no doubt, was one of
the pieces of evidence the prosecution was understood to have up its
sleeve, and that portion of the prosecuting counsel's garment was
watched with feverish interest for further disclosures. They came
rapidly enough, but we must hurry them even more. The name of Miss
Florence Belton, when it rose to the surface of the evidence, riveted
every eye and ear. Miss Belton was one of those ambiguous ladies who
sometimes drift out from the metropolitan vortex and circle restfully in
backwaters for varying periods, appearing and disappearing irrelevantly.
They dress beautifully; they are known to "paint" and thought to dye
their hair. They establish no relations, being much too preoccupied.
making exceptions only, as a rule, in favour of one or two young men, to
whom they extend amenities based--it is the common talk--upon late
hours and whiskey-and-soda. They seem superior to the little prevailing
conventions; they excite an unlawful interest; though nobody knows them
black nobody imagines them white; and when they appear upon Main Street
in search of shoelaces or elastic heads are turned and nods, possibly
nudges, exchanged. Miss Belton had come from New York to the Barker
House, Elgin, and young Ormiston's intimacy with her was one of the
things that