The result of this attention can be best learned from the conversation I held with Mr. Gryce the next morning.  
He came earlier than usual, but he found me up and stirring.
 
"Well," he cried, accosting¹ me with a smile as I entered the parlor² where he was seated, "it is all right this time, is it not? No trouble in identifying the gentleman who entered your neighbor's house last night at a quarter to twelve?"
 
Resolved to probe this man's mind to the bottom, I put on my sternest air.
 
"I had not expected any one to enter there so late last night," said I. "Mr. Van Burnam declared so positively³ at the inquest that he was the person we have been endeavoring to identify, that I did not suppose you would consider it necessary to bring him to the house for me to see."
 
"And so you were not in the window?"
 
"I did not say that; I am always where I have promised to be, Mr. Gryce."
 
"Well, then?" he inquired sharply.
 
I was purposely slow in answering him—I had all the longer time to search his face. But its calmness was impenetrable, and finally I declared:[Pg 171]
 
"The man you brought with you last night—you were the person who accompanied him, were you not—was not the man I saw alight there four nights ago."
 
He may have expected it; it may have been the very assertion he desired from me, but his manner showed displeasure, and the quick "How?" he uttered was sharp and peremptory⁴.
 
"I do not ask who it was," I went on, with a quiet wave of my hand that immediately restored him to himself, "for I know you will not tell me. But what I do hope to know is the name of the man who entered that same house at just ten minutes after nine. He was one of the funeral guests, and he arrived in a carriage that was immediately preceded by a coach from which four persons alighted, two ladies and two gentlemen."
 
"I do not know the gentleman, ma'am," was the detective's half-surprised and half-amused retort. "I did not keep track of every guest that attended the funeral."
 
"Then you didn't do your work as well as I did mine," was my rather dry reply. "For I noted⁵ every one who went in; and that gentleman, whoever he was, was more like the person I have been trying to identify than any one I have seen enter there during my four midnight vigils."
 
Mr. Gryce smiled, uttered a short "Indeed!" and looked more than ever like a sphinx. I began quietly to hate him, under my calm exterior⁶.
 
"Was Howard at his wife's funeral?" I asked.
 
"He was, ma'am."
 
"And did he come in a carriage?"
 
"He did, ma'am."[Pg 172]
 
"Alone?"
 
"He thought he was alone; yes, ma'am."
 
"Then may it not have been he?"
 
"I can't say, ma'am."
 
Mr. Gryce was so obviously out of his element under this cross-examination that I could not suppress a smile even while I experienced a very lively indignation at his reticence⁷. He may have seen me smile and he may not, for his eyes, as I have intimated, were always busy with some object entirely⁸ removed from the person he addressed; but at all events he rose, leaving me no alternative but to do the same.
 
"And so you didn't recognize the gentleman I brought to the neighboring house just before twelve o'clock," he quietly remarked, with a calm ignoring of my last question which was a trifle exasperating⁹.
 
"No."
 
"Then, ma'am," he declared, with a quick change of manner, meant, I should judge, to put me in my proper place, "I do not think we can depend upon the accuracy of your memory;" and he made a motion as if to leave.
 
As I did not know whether his apparent disappointment was real or not, I let him move to the door without a reply. But once there I stopped him.
 
"Mr. Gryce," said I, "I don't know what you think about this matter, nor whether you even wish my opinion upon it. But I am going to express it, for all that. I do not believe that Howard killed his wife with a hat-pin."
 
"No?" retorted the old gentleman, peering into his hat, with an ironical¹⁰ smile which that inoffensive article of attire¹¹ had certainly not merited. "And why, Miss[Pg 173] Butterworth, why? You must have substantial reasons for any opinion you would form."
 
"I have an intuition," I responded, "backed by certain reasons. The intuition won't impress you very deeply, but the reasons may not be without some weight, and I am going to confide¹² them to you."
 
"Do," he entreated¹³ in a j............