I never saw any good reason for my changing the opinion just
expressed. Indeed, as time went on and a further investigation
was made into the life and character of these two brothers, I came
to think that not only had the unhappy Veronica mistaken the person
of Wallace Pfeiffer for that of her husband William, but also the
nature of the message he sent her and the motives which actuated
it; that the interview he so peremptorily demanded before she
descended to her nuptials would, had she but understood it properly,
have yielded her an immeasurable satisfaction instead of rousing
in her alarmed breast the criminal instincts of her race; that it
was meant to do this; that he, knowing William's secret--a secret
which the latter naturally would confide to him at a moment so
critical as that which witnessed their parting in the desolate
Klondike pass--had come, not to reproach her with her new nuptials,
but to relieve her mind in case she cherished the least doubt of
her full right to marry again, by assurances of her husband's death
and of her own complete freedom. To this he may have intended to
add some final messages of love and confidence from the man she
had been so ready to forget; but nothing worse. Wallace Pfeiffer
was incapable of anything worse, and if she had only resigned
herself to her seeming fate and consented to see this man--

But to return to fact and leave speculation to the now doubly
wretched Jeffrey.

On the evening of the day which saw our first recognition of this
crime as the work of Veronica Moore, the following notice appeared
in the Star and all the other local journals:

"Any person who positively remembers passing through Waverley
Avenue between N and M Streets on the evening of May the eleventh
at or near the hour of a quarter past seven will confer a favor on
the detective force of the District by communicating the same to F.
at the police headquarters in C street."

I was "F.," and I was soon deep in business. But I was readily
able to identify those who came from curiosity, and as the persons
who had really fulfilled the conditions expressed in my advertisement
were few, an evening and morning's work sufficed to sift the whole
matter down to the one man who could tell me just what I wanted to
know. With this man I went to the major, and as a result we all
met later in the day at Mr. Moore's door.

This gentleman looked startled enough when he saw the number and
character of his