She passed the clipping to me and I compared the two. It looked strange, and I confess to a tingling feeling that coincidence, that element so much to be feared in any investigation, was not the solution here. But there was such a chance, and I spoke of it. “Coincidence rubbish!” she retorted. “I am not through, my friend.” She went down into the bag again, and I expected nothing less than the pocketbook, letters and all, to appear. But she dragged up, among a miscellany of handkerchiefs, a bottle of smelling-salts, and a few almonds, of which she was inordinately fond, an envelope. “Yesterday,” she said, “I took a taxicab ride. You know my chair gets tiresome, occasionally. I stopped at the newspaper office, and found the bag had not been turned in, but that there was a letter for A 31.” She held out the envelope to me. “Read it,” she observed. “It is a curious human document. You’ll probably be no wiser for reading it, but it shows one thing: We are on the track of something.” I have the letter before me now. It is written on glazed paper, ruled with blue lines. The writing is of the flowing style we used to call Spencerian, and if it lacks character I am inclined to believe that its weakness is merely the result of infrequent use of a pen. You know who this is from. I have the bag and the letters. In a safe place. If you would treat me like a human being, you could have them. I know where the walking-stick is, also. I will tell you this. I have no wish to do her any harm. She will have to pay up in the next world, even if she gets off in this. The way I reason is this: As long as I have the things, I’ve got the whiphand. I’ve got you, too, although you may think I haven’t. About the other matter I was innocent. I swear it again. I never did it. You are the only one in all the world. I would rather be dead than go on like this. It is unsigned. I stared from the letter to Mrs. Dane. She was watching me, her face grave and rather sad. “You and I, Horace,” she said, “live our orderly lives. We eat, and sleep, and talk, and even labor. We think we are living. But for the last day or two I have been seeing visions--you and I and the rest of us, living on the surface, and underneath, carefully kept down so it will not make us uncomfortable, a world of passion and crime and violence and suffering. That letter is a tragedy.” But if she had any suspicion then as to the writer, and I think she had not, she said nothing, and soon after I started for home. I knew that one of two things would have happened there: either my wife would have put away the fire-tongs, which would indicate a truce, or they would remain as they had been, which would indicate that she still waited for the explanation I could not give. It was with a certain tension, therefore, that I opened my front door. The fire-tongs still stood in the stand.