Wondering a little why he had not waited until the minister returned, I followed him out into the hall. The woman was washing the windows by the front door, and Bartley explained we were unable to wait any longer. When we reached the open air, he struck across the lawn to the hedge which divided Carter's estate from the church. He said nothing, walking in a hurried manner. And when we came through the hedge and crossed the grass, he paused in front of the house long enough to say that he was going to take the car and go to town. As he said nothing regarding my going with him, I went into the house, to find Carter in his library. He asked me where Bartley was, and I told him he was going to town, hearing the sound of his car in the drive as I spoke. Then, as Carter was engaged in writing a letter, I picked up the paper and for a while ran through its contents. There was little news, however, and I soon threw it aside. When Carter had finished his letter, he dropped into a large chair, and we started to talk—a conversation which was mostly one-sided. He told me Patton had been very much pleased to find, when he reached the library, that the young woman who had been Warren's secretary was there. She had promised to work with him, and, as she knew more about the library than Patton did, her offer had taken quite a load off his mind. Then he suddenly said that he thought he knew why the Chinaman had not taken the box of opium away when he discovered Warren murdered. That had been one of the things which had puzzled me, that is, if we were to accept the story the man had told as being true. He had found the door of the library open, and Warren dead. The box of opium was his reason for being there; yet he had not taken it, and it had been on the stand all the time. That had rather puzzled me, and when Carter said he thought he knew why it had been untouched, naturally I asked his reason. “Well,” he grinned, “it is what they call in the mystery yarns ‘deduction.’ Now, of course, he must have known there was a box in the library which contained opium. He must have known that.” “Right you are,” came a voice from the doorway, and Ranville came into the room and dropped into the nearest chair. “All right then,” retorted Carter seriously. “But if he did not take it away with him, it was because he did not know which one of the three boxes it was.” “Not so good,” was Ranville's dry comment. He threw one leg over his knee and added: “He might not have been very sure when he went in. But I wager that he knew before he went out.” “What makes you say that?” “It is very simple to me. He told the gardener to bring him the box near the safe. That was the right one as we discovered. If he did not take the box away, there was a reason why he could not; some one must have been approaching the library or else he did not care to be seen with the large box under his arm.”