"Left by her in the little room where she was whiling away the time during which the gentlemen conversed together, possibly about that bit of writing she afterward alluded to." "Certainly." "Her mind was not expectant of evil, for she was smoothing her hair when the shock came----" "Yes, madam, I follow you." "And had to be carried out of the place after----" "What?" "She had placed that cross on Mr. Adams's breast. That was a woman's act, Mr. Gryce." "I am glad to hear you say so. The placing of that cross on a layman's breast was a mystery to me, and is still, I must own. Great remorse or great fright only can account for it." "You will find many mysteries in this case, Mr. Gryce." "As great a number as I ever encountered." "I have to add one." "Another?" "It concerns the old butler." "I thought you did not see him." "I did not see him in the room where Mr. Adams lay." "Ah! Where, then?" "Upstairs. My interest was not confined to the scene of the murder. Wishing to spread the alarm, and not being able to rouse any one below, I crept upstairs, and so came upon this poor wretch going through the significant pantomime that has been so vividly described in the papers." "Ah! Unpleasant for you, very. I imagine you did not stop to talk to him." "No, I fled. I was extremely shaken up by this time and knew only one thing to do, and that was to escape. But I carried one as yet unsolved enigma with me. How came I to hear this man's cries in Mr. Adams's study, and yet find him on the second floor when I came to search the house? He had not time to mount the stairs while I was passing down the hall." "It is a case of mistaken impression. Your ears played you false. The cries came from above, not from Mr. Adams's study." "My ears are not accustomed to play me tricks. You must seek another explanation." "I have ransacked the house; there are no back stairs." "If there were, the study does not communicate with them." "And you heard his voice in the study?" "Plainly." "Well, you have given me a poser, madam." "And I will give you another. If he was the perpetrator of this crime, how comes it that he was not detected and denounced by the young people I saw going out? If, on the contrary, he was simply the witness of another man's blow--a blow which horrified him so much that it unseated his reason--how comes it that he was able to slide away from the door where he must have stood without attracting the attention and bringing down upon himself the vengeance of the guilty murderer?" "He may be one of the noiseless kind, or, rather, may have been such before this shock unsettled his mind." "True, but he would have been seen. Recall the position of the doorway. If Mr. Adams fell where he was struck, the assailant must have had that door directly before him. He could not have helped seeing any one standing in it."