“That is a very hard task,” he said. “It is a task best left, I think, in the hands of the proper authorities.” “They do not know as much as I know,” she answered. “He had an enemy.” “The man Maltabar, of whom you spoke?” “Yes. It was for him I inquired at once. Yet I suppose I must conclude that he is not at any rate a resident around here. I thought that he might have changed his name, and I have described him to a great many people. Nobody seems to recognize him.” “Don’t you think,” Adelaide Fortress said, quietly, “that you have done all that it is possible for any one to do? The police are doing their utmost to solve the mystery of your brother’s death. If I were you I should leave it to them.” She shook her head. “I am not satisfied to do nothing,” she said. “You cannot imagine what it feels like to lose some one very dear to you in such a terrible way. I think of it sometimes until I tremble with passion, and I think that if I could meet the man who did it face to face, I would stab him to the heart myself, with my own hands. I am weak, but I feel that I could do it. I cannot go away from here if I would. Something seems to tell me that the key to the whole mystery lies here--just at hand. No, I cannot go away. I must watch and wait. It may come to me at any moment.” No one answered her. She was conscious of a certain antagonism to her, betrayed by our lack of response to that little outburst and our averted faces. She looked from one to the other of us, and finally at Bruce Deville. “At least, you must think that I am right,” she cried, appealingly. “You are a man, and you would feel like that. I am sure of it. Isn’t it natural that I should want justice? He was all I had in the world.” “He is dead,” Bruce Deville said, gently. “Nothing can bring him back to life. Besides----” He hesitated. The girl leaned forward, listening intently. “Besides what?” “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you,” he said, slowly, “that if a man hated your brother so much as to follow him down here and kill him, that so great a hatred must have sprung from some great cause? I know nothing, of course, of your brother’s life, or of the manner of his life. But men do not strike one another without provocation. They do not kill one another without very great provocation.” “I see what you mean,” she said, slowly. “You mean that my brother must first have been the sinner.” “I am not taking that for granted,” he said, hastily; “only one cannot help thinking sometimes that it might have been so.” “He was my brother,” she said, simply. “He was all that I had in the world. My desire for justice may be selfish. Yet I hate the man who killed him, and I want to see him punished. I do not believe that any sin of his could ever have deserved so terrible a retribution.” “Perhaps not,” he said; “yet there is so little that you can do. To search for any one by the name of Maltabar around here you have proved a hopeless task; and that is your only clue, is it not?”