"O perfectly¹!" I assented², with just the shade of irony³ necessary to rob the assertion of its mendacity. "But go on, go on. You have not begun to satisfy me yet. You did not stop with finding a motive⁴ for the crime I am sure."  
"Madam, you are a female Shylock; you will have the whole of the bond or none."
 
"We are not here to draw comparisons," I retorted. "Keep to the subject, Mr. Gryce; keep to the subject."
 
He laughed; laid down the little basket he held, took it up again, and finally resumed:
 
"Madam, you are right; we did not stop at finding a motive. Our next step was to collect evidence directly connecting him with the crime."
 
"And you succeeded in this?"
 
My tone was unnecessarily eager, this was all so unaccountable to me; but he did not appear to notice it.
 
"We did. Indeed the evidence against him is stronger than that against his brother. For if we ignore the latter part of Howard's testimony⁵, which was evidently a tissue of lies, what remains⁶ against him? Three things: his dogged persistency⁷ in not[Pg 297] recognizing his wife in the murdered woman; the receiving of the house keys from his brother; and the fact that he was seen on the stoop of his father's house at an unusual hour in the morning following this murder. Now what have we against Franklin? Many things.
 
"First:
 
"That he can no more account for the hours between half-past eleven on Tuesday morning and five o'clock on the following Wednesday morning than his brother can. In one breath he declares that he was shut up in his rooms at the hotel, for which no corroborative⁸ evidence is forthcoming; and in another that he was on a tramp after his brother, which seems equally improbable and incapable⁹ of proof.
 
"Second:
 
"That he and not Howard was the man in a linen¹⁰ duster, and that he and not Howard was in possession of the keys that night. As these are serious statements to make, I will give you my reasons for them. They are distinct from the recognition of his person by the inmates¹¹ of the Hotel D——, and added to that recognition, form a strong case against him. The janitor¹² who has charge of the offices in Duane Street, happening to have a leisure moment on the morning of the day on which Mrs. Van Burnam was murdered, was making the most of it by watching the unloading of a huge boiler¹³ some four doors below the Van Burnam warehouse¹⁴. He was consequently looking intently in that direction when Howard passed him, coming from the interview with his brother in which he had been given the keys. Mr. Van Burnam was walking briskly, but finding the sidewalk blocked by the boiler to which I have alluded¹⁵, paused for a moment to let it pass, and[Pg 298] being greatly heated, took out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead. This done, he moved on, just as a man dressed in a long duster came up behind him, stopping where he stopped and picking up from the ground something which the first gentleman had evidently dropped. This last man's figure looked more or less familiar to the janitor, so did the duster, and later he discovered that the latter was the one which he had seen hanging for so long a time in the little disused closet under the warehouse stairs. Its wearer was Franklin Van Burnam, who, as I took pains to learn, had left the office immediately in the wake of his brother, and the object he picked up was the bunch of keys which the latter had inadvertently dropped. He may have thought he lost them later, but it was then and there they slipped from his pocket. I will here add that the duster found by the hackman in his coach has been identified as the one missing from the closet just mentioned.
 
"Third:
 
"The keys with which Mr. Van Burnam's house was unlocked were found hanging in their usual place by noon of the next day. They could not have been taken there by Howard, for he was not seen at the office after the murder. By whom then were they returned, if not by Franklin?
 
"Fourth:
 
"The letter, for the possession of which I believe this crime to have been perpetrated, was found by us in a supposedly secret drawer of this gentleman's desk. It was much crumpled¹⁷, and bore evidences of having been rather rudely dealt with since it was last seen in Mrs. Van Burnam's hand in that very office.[Pg 299]
 
"But the fact which is most convincing, and which will tell most heavily against him, is the unexpected discovery of the murdered lady's rings, also in this same desk. How you became aware that anything of such importance could be found there, knowing even the exact place in which they were secreted¹⁸, I will not stop to ask at this moment. Enough that when your maid entered the Van Burnam offices and insisted with so much ingenuousness¹⁹ that she was expected by Mr. Van Burnam and would wait for his return, the clerk most devoted²⁰ to my interests became distrustful of her intentions, having been told to be on the look-out for a girl in gray or a lady in black with puffs²¹ on each side of two very sharp eyes. You will pardon me, Miss Butterworth. He therefore kept his eyes on the girl and presently espied²² her stretching out her hand towards a hook at the side of Mr. Franklin Van Burnam's desk. As it is upon this hook this gentleman strings²³ his unanswered letters, the clerk rose from his place as quickly as possible, and coming forward with every appearance of polite solicitude,—did she not say he was polite, Miss Butterworth?—inquired what she wished, thinking she was after some letter, or possibly anxious for a specimen²⁴ of some one's handwriting. But she gave him no other reply than a blush and a confused look, for which you must rebuke²⁵ her, Miss Butterworth, if you are going to continue to employ her as your agent in these very delicate affairs. And she made another mistake. She should not have left so abruptly²⁶ upon detection, for that gave the clerk an opportunity to telephone for me, which he immediately did. I was at liberty, and I came at once, and, after hearing his story, decided²⁷ that what was of interest to[Pg 300] you must be of interest to me, and so took a look at the letters she had handled, and discovered, what she also must have discovered before she let them slip from her hand, that the five missing rings we were all in search of were hanging on this same hook amid the sheets of Franklin's correspondence. You can imagine, madam, my satisfaction, and the gratitude²⁸ which I felt towards my agent, who by his quickness had retained to me the honors of a discovery which it would have been injurious to my pride to have had confined entirely²⁹ to yourself."
 
"I can understand," I repeated, and trusted myself to say no more, hot as my secret felt upon my lips.
 
"You have read Poe's story of the filigree³⁰ basket?" he now suggested, running his finger up and down the filigree work he himself held.
 
I nodded. I saw what he meant at once.
 
"Well, the principle involved in that story explains the presence of the rings in the midst of this stack of letters. Franklin Van Burnam, if he is the murderer of his sister-in-law, is one of the subtlest villains³² this city has ever produced, and knowing that, if once suspected, every secret drawer and professed³³ hiding-place within his reach would be searched, he put these dangerous evidences of his guilt³⁴ in a place so conspicuous³⁵, and yet so little likely to attract attention, that even so old a hand as myself did not think of looking for them there."
 
He had finished, and the look he gave me was for myself alone.
 
"And now, madam," said he, "that I have stated the facts of the case against Franklin Van Burnam, has not the moment come for you to show your appreciation[Pg 301] of my good nature by a corresponding show of confidence on your part?"
 
I answered with a distinct negative. "There is too much that is unexplained as yet in your case against Franklin," I objected. "You have shown that he had motive for the murder and that he was connected more or less intimately with the crime we are considering, but you have by no means explained all the phenomena³⁶ accompanying this tragedy. How, for instance, do you account for Mrs. Van Burnam's whim³⁷ in changing her clothing, if her brother-in-law, instead of her husband, was her companion at the Hotel D——?"
 
You see I was determined³⁸ to know the whole story before introducing Miss Oliver's name into this complication.
 
He who had seen through the devices of so many women in his day did not see through mine, perhaps because he took a certain professional pleasure in making his views on this subject clear to the attentive³⁹ Inspector⁴⁰. At all events, this is the way he responded to my half-curious, half-ironical question:
 
"A crime planned and perpetrated for the purpose I have just mentioned, Miss Butterworth, could not have been a simple one under any circumstances. But conceived as this one was by a man of more than ordinary intelligence, and carried out with a skill and precaution little short of marvellous, the features which it presents are of such a varying and subtle character that only by the exercise of a certain amount of imagination can they be understood at all. Such an imagination I possess, but how can I be sure that you do?"
 
"By testing it," I suggested.
 
"Very good, madam, I will. Not from actual knowledge,[Pg 302] then, but from a certain insight I have acquired in my long dealing⁴¹ with such matters, I have come to the conclusion that Franklin Van Burnam did not in the beginning plan to kill this woman in his father's house.
 
"On the contrary, he had fixed⁴² upon a hotel room as the scene of the conflict he foresaw between them, and that he might carry it on without endangering their good names, had urged her to meet him the next morning in the semi-disguise of a gossamer⁴³ over her fine dress and a heavy veil over her striking features; making the pretence⁴⁴, no doubt, of this being the more appropriate costume for her to appear in before the old gentleman should he so far concede to her demands as to take her to the steamer. For himself he had planned the adoption⁴⁵ of a disfiguring duster which had been hanging for a long time in a closet on the ground-floor of the building in Duane Street. All this promised well, but when the time came and he was about to leave his office, his brother unexpectedly appeared and asked for the key to their father's house. Disconcerted no doubt by the appearance of the very person he least wished to see, and astonished by a request so out of keeping with all that had hitherto passed between them, he nevertheless was in too much haste to question him, so gave him what he wanted and Howard went away. As soon after as he could lock his desk and don his hat, Franklin followed, and merely stopping to cover his coat with the old duster, he went out and hastened towards the place of meeting. Under most circumstances all this might have happened without the brothers encountering each other again, but a temporary obstruction⁴⁶ on the sidewalk having, as we[Pg 303] know, detained Howard, Franklin was enabled to approach him sufficiently⁴⁷ close to see him draw his pocket-handkerchief out of his pocket, and with it the keys which he had just given him. The latter fell, and as there was a great pounding of iron going on in the building just over their heads, Howard did not perceive his loss but went quickly on. Franklin coming up behind him picked up the keys, and with a thought, or perhaps as yet with no thought, of the use to which they might be applied⁴⁸, put them in his own pocket before proceeding⁴⁹ on his way.
 
"New York is a large place, and much can take place in it without comment. Franklin Van Burnam and his sister-in-law met and went together to the Hotel D—— without being either recognized............