n which cleared up an extraordinary record.
The annals of the disease which predisposed Theodore Siddle to crime
went back many years. He was a fairly wealthy man by inheritance, and
adopted the profession of chemistry as a hobby. One fact stood out
boldly. He was aware of his hereditary taint, and had settled down in
Steynholme believing that a quiet life, free from care or the
distractions of a town, would enable him to overcome it. Probably, the
lawyer held, the man owned two distinct individualities, and the baser
instincts gradually overpowered the humane ones.

Of course, the whole history of those trying days had to come out in open
court, and the postmaster's daughter was given a descriptive and
pictorial boom which many an actress envied. Peters was restored to grace
when he showed plainly that his articles had kept the fickle barometer of
public opinion at "set fair," in so far as Grant and Doris were
concerned.

"But," as Hart drawled during a dinner of reconciliation, "you needn't
have been so infernally personal about my hat."

Grant and Doris were married before the year was out. Mr. Martin retired
on a pension, and the young couple decided that they could never
dissociate The Hollies from the tragic memories bound up with its
ghost-window and lawn. So the place was sold, and Steynholme knows "the
postmaster's daughter" no more. Winter and Furneaux week-ended with them
recently at a pretty little nook in Dorset. Hart, just home from the
Balkans, traveled from town with the detectives, and Doris, a radiant
young matron, was as flippant as the best of them.

One evening, when the men were sitting late in the smoking-room, the talk
turned on the now half-forgotten drama in which the hapless Adelaide
Melhuish played her last role.

"I met Peters in the Savage Club the other night," said Hart, filling the
negro-head pipe with care while he talked, "and he was chortling about
his 'psychological study,' as he called it, of that unfortunate chemist.
He still clings to the theory that your wife was the intended victim,
Grant. Do you agree with him?"

"Rubbish!" cried Furneaux, before his host could answer. "At best, Peters
is only a clever ass. Siddle never had the remotest notion of killing
Miss Doris Martin, as Mrs. Grant was then. We shall never know for
certain just what happened, but there are elements in the affair which
give ground for reasonable guesswork. The first thing that impressed
Winter and me