Summoning up her courage and meeting each inquiring eye with a look which seemed to carry a different message to each, she remarked very quietly: “This is not a matter to guess at. I must have time and I must look a little deeper into the facts just given me. I presume that the table I see over there is the one upon which Mr. Upjohn laid the manuscript during Mr. Spielhagen’s unconsciousness.” All nodded. “Is it--I mean the table--in the same condition it was then? Has nothing been taken from it except the manuscript?” “Nothing.” “Then the missing page is not there,” she smiled, pointing to its bare top. A pause, during which she stood with her gaze fixed on the floor before her. She was thinking and thinking hard. Suddenly she came to a decision. Addressing Mr. Upjohn she asked if he were quite sure that in taking the manuscript from Mr. Spielhagen’s hand he had neither disarranged nor dropped one of its pages. The answer was unequivocal. “Then,” she declared, with quiet assurance and a steady meeting with her own of every eye, “as the thirteenth page was not found among the others when they were taken from this table, nor on the persons of either Mr. Cornell or Mr. Spielhagen, it is still in that inner room.” “Impossible!” came from every lip, each in a different tone. “That room is absolutely empty.” “May I have a look at its emptiness?” she asked, with a naive glance at Mr. Van Broecklyn. “There is positively nothing in the room but the chair Mr. Spielhagen sat on,” objected that gentleman with a noticeable air of reluctance. “Still, may I not have a look at it?” she persisted, with that disarming smile she kept for great occasions. Mr. Van Broecklyn bowed. He could not refuse a request so urged, but his step was slow and his manner next to ungracious as he led the way to the door of the adjoining room and threw it open. Just what she had been told to expect! Bare walls and floors and an empty chair! Yet she did not instantly withdraw, but stood silently contemplating the panelled wainscoting surrounding her, as though she suspected it of containing some secret hiding-place not apparent to the eye. Mr. Van Broecklyn, noting this, hastened to say: “The walls are sound, Miss Strange. They contain no hidden cupboards.” “And that door?” she asked, pointing to a portion of the wainscoting so exactly like the rest that only the most experienced eye could detect the line of deeper colour which marked an opening. For an instant Mr. Van Broecklyn stood rigid, then the immovable pallor, which was one of his chief characteristics, gave way to a deep flush as he explained: “There was a door there once; but it has been permanently closed. With cement,” he forced himself to add, his countenance losing its evanescent colour till it shone ghastly again in the strong light.