had it been? But one name
suggested itself to me,--Mr. Jeffrey.

It was not so easy for me to reach this man as it had been for me
to reach his singular and unimaginative uncle. In the first place,
his door had been closed to every one since his wife's death.
Neither friends nor strangers could gain admittance there unless
they came vested with authority from the coroner. And this, even
if I could manage to obtain it, would not answer in my case. What
I had to say and do would better follow a chance encounter. But
no chance encounter with this gentleman seemed likely to fall to
my lot, and finally I swallowed my pride and asked another favor
of the lieutenant. Would he see that I was given an opportunity
for carrying some message, or of doing some errand which would lead
to my having an interview with Mr. Jeffrey? If he would, I stood
ready to promise that my curiosity should stop at this point and
that I would cease to make a nuisance of myself.

I think he suspected me by this time; but he made no remark, and in
a day or so I was summoned to carry a note to the house in K Street.

Mrs. Jeffrey's funeral had taken place the day before and the house
looked deserted. But my summons speedily brought a neat-looking,
but very nervous maid to the door, whose eyes took on an unmistakable
expression of resistance when I announced my errand and asked to see
Mr. Jeffrey. The expression would not have struck me as peculiar
if she had raised any objection to the interview I had solicited.
But she did not. Her fear and antipathy, consequently, sprang from
some other source than her interest in the man most threatened by
my visit. Was it-could it be, on her own account? Recalling what
I had heard whispered about the station concerning a maid of the
Jeffreys who always seemed on the point of saying something which
never really left her lips, I stopped her as she was about to slip
upstairs and quietly asked:

"Are you Loretta?"

The way she turned, the way she looked at me as she gave me a short
affirmative, and then quickly proceeded on her way, convinced me
that my colleagues were right as to her being a woman who had some
cause for dreading police interference. I instantly made up my mind
that here was a mine to be worked and that I knew just the demure
little soul best equipped to act the part of miner.

In a moment she came back, and I had a chance to note again her
pretty but expressionless features, among w