"You will remember that you found the letter on the floor. That would seem to me to indicate rather the opposite. If anyone had actually been _in_ the room, they would have been far more apt to place the message on the dressing table. That it was found upon the floor indicates to my mind that it was in some way inserted--thrown, perhaps--through the window from without." He took the letter in question from his pocket, and sitting down, gazed intently at the surface of the envelope. Presently he passed it over to Mrs. Morton. "What do you make of that?" he said, indicating with his finger a curious row of indentations, extending in a semi-circular line about midway of one of the longer edges of the envelope. The marks were very faint, but by turning the letter about in the light, Mrs. Morton at last managed to make them out. What they were, how they had been placed there Duvall could not say. Yet their presence indicated something of value, of that he felt sure. "I don't understand them at all," Mrs. Morton replied, returning the letter to him. "It looks as though someone had held the letter in a--a pair of pincers." The suggestion conveyed by her words interested Duvall greatly. The same thought had been forming in his own mind. He rose to his feet, his eyes shining with interest. Why could not such a pair of pincers or forceps have been attached to a long pole, such as a fishing rod, and the letter in this way pushed through the window and released by pulling on a cord attached to one of the forceps' handles? The thing was perfectly practical, except for the fact that there seemed no place from which such a pole or rod might have been extended. He gazed out of the library window, across the court to the row of dormer windows in the house opposite. The distance from the nearest of them, to Ruth's window was, as he had before observed, at least twenty feet horizontally, or some twenty-three feet on the diagonal. Then there was the distance from the window to the dressing table, at least eight feet more, to be added, making necessary a rod over thirty feet long. And he saw at a glance that even could a rod of this length be secured and handled, the angle made by a line from the dormer window through Ruth's window was such that the end of the rod or pole would strike the floor only a few feet beyond the windowsill, and in no possible way could its further end be elevated sufficiently to deposit the letter in front of the dressing table. The thing was manifestly out of the question, even had the window of the girl's room been _wide open_. And Mrs. Morton had assured him with the greatest positiveness that it had been open, at the time the letter was found, _but a few inches_. He returned the letters to his pocket and rose.