ole
and has heard no human voice within; and last, we have heard the
woman's vague description of what she saw."

"You have destroyed every possible theory," said the captain, deeply
interested, "and have suggested nothing new."

"Unfortunately, I cannot; but the truth may be very simple, after all.
The old surgeon is so peculiar that I am prepared to discover something
remarkable."

"Have you suspicions?"

"I have."

"Of what?"

"A crime. The woman suspects it."

"And betrays it?"

"Certainly, because it is so horrible that her humanity revolts; so
terrible that her whole nature demands of her that she hand over the
criminal to the law; so frightful that she is in mortal terror; so
awful that it has shaken her mind."

"What do you propose to do?" asked the captain.

"Secure evidence. I may need help."

"You shall have all the men you require. Go ahead, but be careful. You
are on dangerous ground. You would be a mere plaything in the hands of
that man."

Two days afterwards the detective again sought the captain.

"I have a queer document," he said, exhibiting torn fragments of paper,
on which there was writing. "The woman stole it and brought it to me.
She snatched a handful out of a book, getting only a part of each of a
few leaves."

These fragments, which the men arranged as best they could, were (the
detective explained) torn by the surgeon's wife from the first volume
of a number of manuscript books which her husband had written on one
subject,--the very one that was the cause of her excitement. "About the
time that he began a certain experiment three years ago," continued the
detective, "he removed everything from the suite of two rooms
containing his study and his operating-room. In one of the bookcases
that he removed to a room across the passage was a drawer, which he
kept locked, but which he opened from time to time. As is quite common
with such pieces of furniture, the lock of the drawer is a very poor
one; and so the woman, while making a thorough search yesterday, found
a key on her bunch that fitted this lock. She opened the drawer, drew
out the bottom book of a pile (so that its mutilation would more likely
escape discovery), saw that it might contain a clew, and tore out a
handful of the leaves. She had barely replaced the book, locked the
drawer, and made her escape when her husband appeared. He hardly ever
allows her to be out of his sight when she is in that part of the
house."