state of the safe, and the keys left in the lock, indicate that everything was done in extreme haste. This was my theory before I came into your house, Madam; but after nearly five weeks' careful study of every individual under this roof, I have reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that nobody in your household is in it, either as principal or accomplice, before or after the fact. I think it is in an old play that the remark has been made that 'Murder will out,' also that 'Blood will have blood.' Both remarks are perfectly correct; but there is another remark that might have been made with even greater truth, and that is 'Money will out.' You can't hide money--at least the average criminal can't. That's where he gives himself away. He can't keep his plunder to himself--the money burns--it burns--he must spend it. Some spend it on drink; some, begging your pardon, Madam--spend it on ladies; some, the weakest of the lot, spend it on clothes and hansom cabs; but spend they must. There's not one of those four young men that could keep five or six thou' in his pocket and not give himself away--somehow or somewhere. Nor yet Mr. Sedgewick, fine gentleman and philosopher as he is--nor yet even the odd man. Being a poor creature, he'd have melted those securities with the first low fence he could hear of, and would have been on the drink night after night, till he got the horrors and gave himself up to the police. I've been looking for the money, Madam, and finding no trace of _that_, I know I've not come within range of the party we want. We must look outside, Madam, and we may have to look a long way off. If the possessor of those bonds is an old hand, he is not likely to turn them into money anywhere in this City; for though they are bonds to bearer, a transaction of that kind must leave some trace. I feel the humiliation of my failure, Madam, and I have no doubt you are disappointed." Vera looked up at him with melancholy eyes, pale, hollow-cheeked, a sombre figure in the severest mourning that the Maison de Deuil near the Madeleine could supply, and French mourning knows no compromise. "Disappointed," she repeated slowly in a low, tired voice, and then, to Mr. Japp's surprise and almost horror, she said, "I don't think it much matters whether the wretched creature who killed him is discovered or not. It can make no difference to _him_ lying at rest, beyond all pain and sorrow, that his murderer is hidden somewhere out of reach of the law, and may escape the agony of a shameful death." The horror in her widening eyes as she said these words showed that her imagination could realise the horror of the scaffold. "However he may escape human law," she went on, in the same slow, dull tones, "he must carry his punishment with him to the grave. He can never know one peaceful hour. He can never know the comfort of dreamless sleep. He will be a haunted man."