Wilford\'s office was in an old building of the days when a structure of five or six stories, with a cast-iron, ornamented front, was considered a wonderful engineering achievement. It was down-town, in the heart of the financial district, and had been chosen by Wilford, without a doubt, to convey an impression of solidity and conservatism, a useful camouflage to cover the essential character of his law practice as scandal attorney.

We climbed the worn stairs with Leslie, and, as we mounted, I noticed that there was also, down the hall, a back stairway, evidently placed there in case of fire. Hence, it was possible, I reasoned, for a person to have slipped in or out practically unobserved from the front.

We knew now that at least one person, probably two, had been there, though who they were we did not know. Nor was there yet any clue, except that certainly a woman had visited Wilford, at least early in the evening.

Wilford\'s office was on the third floor, in the [139] front. We entered and looked about. Past the outer railing and outer office was his own sanctum.

It was furnished lavishly with divans and settees in mahogany and dark leather, with elaborate hangings over the windows and on the walls. There were law-books, but only, it seemed, for the purpose of giving a legal flavor to the place. Most of the legal library was outside. The office was rather like a den than a lawyer\'s office.

Reflecting, I could see the reason. Society must be made welcome here, and at ease. Besides, the conservative surroundings were quite valuable in covering up the profession—I had almost said, business—of divorce made easy and pleasant. I recalled Rascon and the crook detectives who made little concealment of their business—"Evidence for divorce furnished." Doubtless many of these gentry had found occupation from this source. What stories these walls might have told! They would have made even Belle Balcom\'s ears tingle.

At once Kennedy began his search of the office, going over everything minutely but quickly, while we waited, apart.

"Not even a finger-print has been left unobscured!" he exclaimed, finally, almost ready in disgust to give it up. "It is shameful—shameful," he muttered. "When will they learn to let things alone until some one comes who knows the scientific importance of little things! If only I could have been first on the job."
[140]

"There\'s the typewriter," suggested Leslie, trying to divert attention and smooth things over.

"Have you the letter?" asked Craig.

Leslie drew it eagerly from his pocket and unfolded it. Kennedy took it, spread it out and studied it a moment:

Honora:

Don\'t think I am a coward to do this, but things cannot go on as they have been going. It is no use. I cannot work it out. This is the only way. So I shall drop out. You will find my will in the safe. Good-by forever.

Vail.

Then Craig moved over and sat at the typewriter. Quickly he struck several keys, then made a hasty comparison of the note with what he had written.

"The \'s\' and the \'r\' are out of alignment, the \'e\' battered—in both," he concluded, hurriedly, as though merely confirming what he was already convinced of. "There are enough marks to identify the writing as having been done on this machine, all right. No, there\'s nothing in this note—except what is back of it, and we do not know that yet. Did Wilford write that letter, or was it written for him? It could hardly have been done voluntarily."

"It was in this desk chair that we found him sprawled—so," illustrated Doctor Leslie, dropping into the chair. Then, straightening up, he indicated the big flat-topped desk in the middle of [141] the room. "The two glasses were on this desk—one of them here, the other over there."

As he pointed the spots out, one of them near where he was, the other near the outer edge of the desk, Kennedy\'s eye fell on the desk calendar.

"I removed the pages I told you about," supplied Leslie, noticing the direction of Craig\'s glance. "It\'s a loose-leaf affair, as you see. Here they are."

Leslie drew from his pocket the leaves for the various days, and we looked at them again, with their notations—one reading, "Prepare papers in proposed case of Lathrop vs. Lathrop." Others read, "Vina at four," and other dates, with hours attached. There were several of them, more than would seem to have been necessary were the relation merely that of lawyer and client for so brief a time. There were none for the day of the murder however.

Kennedy continued the search, now rummaging the papers, now directing either Leslie or myself to bring him objects.

He had asked me for a letter-file, and I was turning from a cabinet to hand it to him when my foot kicked some small, soft object lying along the edge of the rug. The thing, whatever it was, flew over and hit the baseboard.

Mechanically I reached down and picked the object up, holding it in the palm of my hand.

It seemed to be a rough-coated, grayish-brown bean, of irregular, kidney shape, about an inch [142] long and half an inch thick, with two margins, one short and concave, the other long and convex. The surfaces were rounded slightly, but flattened. The coat of the bean was glossy.

Kennedy, with quick eye, had noted that I had picked up something and was over at my side in a moment.

"What\'s that?" he asked quickly, taking the thing from my hand as I turned to him.

He looked at it critically for a moment. Then he pressed the hard outer coat until it parted slightly, disclosing inside two creamy white cotyledons. He studied them for some time, then pressed the bean back into shape again as it had been before.

I was about to ask what he thought it was, and where it came from, when there was a noise in the direction of the door. We turned to see that it was a man in overalls shuffling in, his cap in his hand.

"Oh, beggin\' your pardon, Doctor," he addressed Leslie, "I heard some one here. I didn\'t know it was you."

It was the night watchman who had been off the job on perhaps the only occasion in years when it would have meant much for him to have been on it, but was making up for his laxity now by excessive vigilance.

"Pete," demanded Leslie, sharply, "did you see a woman here that night?"

"N-no, sir—that is, sir—I don\'t know. There [143] was some one here—but Mr. Wilford, he kept such late hours and irregular that I thought nothing of it. I thought it was all right, sir. Later, when I didn\'t hear any voices, I thought they had gone home. I didn\'t see the lights burnin\'—you wouldn\'t ha\' noticed that, except from the other side of the street. I s\'pose that\'s why they didn\'t discover the body till mornin\'. But a woman here—no, sir, I can\'t say as I\'d say that, sir."

Whatever else there might have been said about Pete, it was evident that he was perfectly honest. He even confessed his lack of observation and his inefficiency with utter frankness. There did not seem to be a hope of obtaining anything by questioning Pete. He had told all he really knew. Others might have embellished the story had they been in his place, and so have led us astray. At least he had the merit of not doing that.

"So—here you are," exclaimed a deep voice at the door.

It was Doyle, flushed and excited.

"You may go, Pete," nodded Leslie to the janitor, who backed out of the room, still pulling at his cap.

Alone, Doyle turned to us.

"Confound Shattuck!" he exclaimed. "That man is the limit. I\'ll get him, if he doesn\'t look out. He\'s a game bird—but he flies funny."

"Why, what has he done now?" asked Kennedy.

"Done?" fumed Doyle. "Done? Been threatening, I hear, to have me \'broke\'—that\'s all. I don\'t care about that, not a whoop—even if he had the influence [144] with the administration. What I care about is that he is putting every obstacle in the way of my finding out anything from that woman. She\'s hard enough to manage, Heaven knows, without his butting in."

"What about that bean Jameson picked up here?" asked Leslie, impatiently, as Doyle paused. "Have you any idea what it may be?"

"A bean?" inquired Doyle, looking from one of us to the other and not understanding. "A bean? Picked up here? Why, what do you mean?"

I was inclined to be vexed at Leslie for having mentioned it, but I soon saw that Kennedy betrayed no traces of annoyance. On the contrary, he seemed rather eager to answer, as he drew the thing from his pocket, where he had placed it when Pete came in.

"Just something Jameson happened to find on the very edge of the rug, quite by accident, over by the letter-files," Craig explained, with a certain gusto at showing Doyle a thing that he had overlooked. "Ever see anything like it?"

Doyle took the bean, but it was evident that both it and its discovery meant nothing to him.

"No," he admitted, reluctantly. "What is it?"

"Without a doubt it is one of the famous so-called \'ordeal beans\' of Calabar," replied Kennedy, offhand.

"Calabar?" I repeated, in surprise. "Why, that\'s a place on the west coast of Africa, isn\'t it? What would a Calabar bean be lying on the floor here for?"
[145]

"What do you mean—ordeal bean?" questioned Doyle, somewhat incredulously, while Leslie maintained a discreet silence.

"In the Calabar, where these things grow," explained Kennedy, not put out for an instant, "as you perhaps know, they have a strange form of dueling with these seeds. Two opponents divide a bean. Each eats a half. It is some religious ceremony—voodoo, or some such thing, I suppose—a superstition. Sometimes both die—for the bean contains physostigmine and is the chief source from which this drug is obtained."

"You mean they eat it—a poison?" I asked.

"Certainly. Over there, the natives believe that God will decide who is guilty and who is innocent, and that he will miraculously spare the innocent. I suppose that sometimes one gets a half a bean that doesn\'t contain so high ............