“We have here two separate accounts of how death comes to those who breathe their last on the ancestral hearthstone of the Moore house library. “Certain facts are emphasized in both: “Each victim was alone when he fell. “Each death was preceded by a scene of altercation or violent controversy between the victim and the alleged master of these premises. “In each case the master of the house reaped some benefit, real or fancied, from the other’s death.” A curious set of paragraphs. Some one besides myself was searching for the very explanation I was at that moment intent upon. I should have considered it the work of our detectives if the additional lines I now came upon could have been written by any one but a Moore. But no one of any other blood or associations could have indited the amazing words which followed. The only excuse I could find for them was the difficulty which some men feel in formulating their thoughts otherwise than with pen and paper, they were so evidently intended for the writer’s eye and understanding only, as witness: “Let me recall the words my father was uttering when my brother rushed in upon us with that account of my misdeeds which changed all my prospects in life. It was my twenty-first birthday and the old man had just informed me that as the eldest son I might expect the house in which we stood to be mine one day and with it a secret which has been handed down from father to son ever since the Moores rose to eminence in the person of Colonel Alpheus. Then he noted that I was now of age and immediately went on to say: ‘This means that you must be told certain facts, without the knowledge of which you would be no true Moore. These facts you must hereafter relate to your son or whoever may be fortunate enough to inherit from you. It is the legacy which goes with this house and one which no inheritor as yet has refused either to receive or to transmit. Listen. You have often noted the gold filigree ball which I wear on my watch-guard. This ball is the talisman of our house, of this house. If, in the course of your life you find yourself in an extremity from which no issue seems possible mind the strictness of the injunction—an extremity from which no issue seems possible (I have never been in such a case; the gold filigree ball has never been opened by me) you will take this trinket from its chain, press upon this portion of it so, and use what you will find inside, in connection with—’ Alas! it was at this point John Judson came rushing in and those disclosures were made which lost me my father’s regard and gave to the informer my rightful inheritance, together with the full secret of which I only got a part. But that part must help me now to the whole. I have seen the filigree ball many times; Veronica has it now. But its contents have never been shown me. If I knew what they were and why the master of this secret always left the library—”