Whether this was intended as a delicate way of intimating that the conflict had proved fatal to one of the conflicting parties, or whether the widow in question was the relict of the artistic genius whose brain had conceived and whose hand had drawn the picture, I am unable to say, as particulars were not given. In regard to the details of the raffle, however, the promoters of the enterprise had condescended to be more explicit, as another label announced that the price of tickets was sixpence, and that they were “to be obtained of the Professor.” I was, however, more concerned at the moment in ascertaining what had become of the letters, so I scanned the room carefully, shifting meanwhile the outspread and interposed broadsheet of the “Daily Telegraph”--like a yachtsman setting his canvas close to the wind--so as to keep myself out of reach of the Professor’s too-inquisitive glance, and switching my eyes from object to object until they discovered the missing letters placed upon a rack which hung upon the wall near the window. “It’s very dark here, or else my sight’s getting bad and I shall have to take to glasses. I’m hanged if I can read this small print,” I said aloud, standing up and moving towards the window, as if to get a better light. For half a minute I pretended to read, and then I leisurely shook out the newspaper to its fullest extent, in order to reverse the sheet, thus hiding myself completely from the Professor’s eye. As I did so I took the opportunity to snatch the packet of letters from the rack. It was no easy matter to shuffle through them with one hand and without attracting attention, but I accomplished the task successfully, and not without result, for the bottom letter of the packet was for Mr. Henry Jeanes, and was in the handwriting of the barber at Cotley. The reader will remember that I had prepared two envelopes bearing the Cotley postmark, and addressed to Jeanes in as close an imitation of the barber’s handwriting as possible. Into one of these envelopes I had that morning slipped a sheet of blank paper on which was pasted the newspaper cutting about the finding of the body of poor Green (I had a reason for doing so which will shortly transpire), and this envelope I was at that moment carrying just inside my sleeve. To abstract the original letter and replace it by the dummy was the work of a few seconds. It was well that I had come thus prepared, for in the next instant the Professor had snatched the packet from my hand, and was asking in a voice quivering with fury, “What the dickens I meant by such impudence?” “What’s the excitement?” I said, as calmly and unconsciously as possible. “I was only looking if there was one for me? There’s no harm done.”