Miss Butterworth put her eye again to the opening, and gave a grunt, a very decided grunt. With her a grunt was significant of surprise. "He is shaking his fist; he is all alive with passion. He looks as if he would like to kill the bird." "Perhaps that is why the creature was strung up so high. You may be sure Mr. Adams had some basis for his idiosyncrasies." "I begin to think so. I don't know that I care to go back where that man is. He has a very murderous look." "And a very feeble arm, Miss Butterworth. You are safe under my protection. My arm is not feeble." [Illustration: A-Table. B-Small Stand. C-Door to Bedroom. D-Evelyn's Picture E-Loophole on Stair Landing. F-Entrance to Study.] [1] [Footnote 1: Since my readers may not understand how an opening above the stairway might communicate with Mr. Adams's study, I here submit a diagram of the same. The study walls were very high, forming a rounded extension at the back of the house.] CHAPTER IX. HIGH AND LOW. At the foot of the stairs, Mr. Gryce excused himself, and calling in two or three men whom he had left outside, had the valet removed before taking Miss Butterworth back into the study. When all was quiet again, and they found an opportunity to speak, Mr. Gryce remarked: "One very important thing has been settled by the experiment we have just made. Bartow is acquitted of participation in this crime." "Then we can give our full attention to the young people. You have heard nothing from them, I suppose?" "No." "Nor from the old man who laughed?" "No." Miss Butterworth looked disappointed. "I thought--it seemed very probable--that the scrap of writing you found would inform you who these were. If it was important enough for the dying man to try to swallow it, it certainly should give some clew to his assailant." "Unfortunately, it does not do so. It was a veritable scrawl, madam, running something like this: 'I return your daughter to you. She is here. Neither she nor you will ever see me again. Remember Evelyn!' And signed, 'Amos's son.'" "Amos's son! That is Mr. Adams himself." "So we have every reason to believe." "Strange! Unaccountable! And the paper inscribed with these words was found clinched between his teeth! Was the handwriting recognized?" "Yes, as his own, if we can judge from the specimens we have seen of his signature on the fly-leaves of his books." "Well, mysteries deepen. And the retaining of this paper was so important to him that even in his death throe he thrust it in this strangest of all hiding-places, as being the only one that could be considered safe from search. And the girl! Her first words on coming to herself were: 'You have left that line of writing behind.' Mr. Gryce, those words, few and inexplicable as they are, contain the key to the whole situation. Will you repeat them again, if you please, sentence by sentence?" "With pleasure, madam; I have said them often enough to myself. First, then: 'I return your daughter to you!'"