Burrell, to the best of his ability, explained his motive for proffering such a request. This must have been satisfactory, for in the end the landlord consented to conduct him to the room in question. From the day of the murder it had been kept locked, and it must be confessed that since no one would inhabit it, and it did not in consequence return its owner its accustomed rent, he had some measure of excuse for the irritation he displayed in connection with it. “Dere it is,” he said, throwing the door open, “and you can look your full at it. I have scrubbed all dot floor dill my arms ache mit it, but I can not get der blood marks out. Dot stain is just where she was found, boor girl!” The man pointed, with grizly relish, to a dark stain upon the floor, and then went on to describe the impression the murder and its attendant incidents had produced upon him. To any other man than Burrell, they would probably have been uninteresting to a degree. The latter, however, knowing the importance of little things, allowed him to continue his chatter. At the same time his quick eyes were taking in the character of the room, making his own deductions and drawing his own inferences. At last, when the other had exhausted his powers of description, Burrell took from his pocket his favourite magnifying glass, cased in its covering of chamois leather. Having prepared it for business, he went down on his hands and knees and searched the floor minutely. What he was looking for, or what he hoped to find, he did not know himself, but a life’s experience had taught him that clews are often picked up in the most unexpected quarters. “I’ve known a man get himself hanged,” he had once been heard to remark, “simply because he neglected to put a stitch to a shirt button and had afterward to borrow a needle and thread to do it. I remember another who had the misfortune to receive a sentence of fifteen years for forgery, who would never have been captured, but for a peculiar blend of tobacco, which he would persist in smoking after the doctors had told him it was injurious to his health.” So slow and so careful was his investigation, that the landlord, who preferred more talkative company, very soon tired of watching him. Bidding him lock the door and bring the key downstairs with him when he had finished, he returned to the culinary operations from which he had been summoned. Burrell, however, still remained upon his knees on the floor, searching every crack and crevice with that superb and never-wearying patience that was one of his most remarkable characteristics. It was quite certain, as the landlord had said, that the floor had been most thoroughly and conscientiously scrubbed since the night of the murder. He rose to his feet and brushed his knees. “Nothing there,” he said to himself. “They’ve destroyed any chance of my finding anything useful.”