The detective acquiesced, and after some further conversation, in which I joined, he rose, and passing through into the library, commenced an examination of the papers lying on the writing-table. With my rival in the affections of the woman who was my wife, I assisted him, while the widow stood behind us watching, her face pale and anxious and her nervous hands trembling. She was in fear. Of that I felt absolutely convinced. But what discovery did she dread? While we were bending, examining the contents of one of the drawers, which was full of papers relating to the Colonel's duty as a justice of the peace--for it was here that he performed his judicial work--his widow stood behind me, and, with a quick movement, sidled up to her stepson. The next instant it occurred to me that she had passed something to him; but, pretending to be engrossed in the papers, I made no sign that I had observed their rapid exchange. "Have you found anything?" she inquired calmly, after a few moments. "No; nothing, unfortunately," Bullen responded. And then, having searched the room from top to bottom, suggested a move to the Colonel's bedroom. Here the search, both of the clothes in his wardrobe and of the room wherein he usually slept, likewise proved fruitless. After twenty minutes or so, however, I contrived, while the others were busy turning over the dead man's effects, to slip back to the library. Young Chetwode had, at the moment when the suspicious movement had been made behind me, stood with his back to the black marble mantelshelf, and it was to examine this that I returned. While doing so I suddenly found a crack between the wall and the upright marble support, where the plaster had dried out by the heat of the winter fires, and, peering within, I saw something concealed there. With the aid of my scarf-pin I managed to pick it out, and found that it was an unmounted photograph that had been crumpled in the hand and was dirty. Mrs Chetwode had managed to seize it before we could discover it, and the stepson had concealed it in that ingenious hiding-place. I spread it out; the picture I gazed upon was both startling and ghastly. It was a portrait of Beryl, my love, supported by pillows, her face expressionless, her eyes closed. The hideous truth was plain. The photograph had been taken after death! CHAPTER FIFTEEN. THE GREY HOUSE. I placed the mysterious picture in my pocket and remained silent. That my wife had been photographed after death there could be no doubt, for I, as a medical man, was, alas! too well acquainted with the appearance of a face from which life had faded, as distinguished from that of one asleep or under the influence of an anaesthetic. Yet she was now living, bright, vivacious, and defiant! Had I not stood near her, seen her silhouette in the darkness, and heard the sweet music of her voice only twelve hours ago? It was incomprehensible--an absolute and complete enigma.