Initials Only | Page 9

the suspected and possibly guilty one. In visions
over which I had little if any control, I saw him in all the restlessness of
a slowly dying down excitement--the surroundings strange and
unknown to me, the figure not--seeking for quiet; facing the past;
facing the future; knowing, perhaps, for the first time in his life what it
was for crime and remorse to murder sleep. I could not think of him as

lying still--slumbering like the rest of mankind, in the hope and
expectation of a busy morrow. Crime perpetrated looms so large in the
soul, and this man had a soul as big as his body; of that I was assured.
That its instincts were cruel and inherently evil, did not lessen its
capacity for suffering. And he was suffering now; I could not doubt it,
remembering the lovely face and fragrant memory of the noble woman
he had, under some unknown impulse, sent to an unmerited doom.
At last I slept, but it was only to rouse again with the same quick
realisation of my surroundings, which I had experienced on my
recovery from my fainting fit of hours before. Someone had stopped at
our door before hurrying by down the hall. Who was that someone? I
rose on my elbow, and endeavoured to peer through the dark. Of
course, I could see nothing. But when I woke a second time, there was
enough light in the room, early as it undoubtedly was, for me to detect
a letter lying on the carpet just inside the door.
Instantly I was on my feet. Catching the letter up, I carried it to the
window. Our two names were on it--Mr. and Mrs. George Anderson:
the writing, Mr. Slater's.
I glanced over at George. He was sleeping peacefully. It was too early
to wake him, but I could not lay that letter down unread; was not my
name on it? Tearing it open, I devoured its contents,--the exclamation I
made on reading it, waking George.
The writing was in Mr. Slater's hand, and the words were:
"I must request, at the instance of Coroner Heath and such of the
police as listened to your adventure, that you make no further mention
of what you saw in the street under our windows last night. The doctors
find no bullet in the wound. This clears Mr. Brotherson."

V
SWEET LITTLE MISS CLARKE

When we took our seats at the breakfast-table, it was with the feeling of
being no longer looked upon as connected in any way with this case.
Yet our interest in it was, if anything, increased, and when I saw
George casting furtive glances at a certain table behind me, I leaned
over and asked him the reason, being sure that the people whose faces I
saw reflected in the mirror directly before us had something to do with
the great matter then engrossing us. His answer conveyed the
somewhat exciting information that the four persons seated in my rear
were the same four who had been reading at the round table in the
mezzanine at the time of Miss Challoner's death.
Instantly they absorbed all my attention, though I dared not give them a
direct look, and continued to observe them only in the glass.
"Is it one family?" I asked.
"Yes, and a very respectable one. Transients, of course, but very well
known in Denver. The lady is not the mother of the boys, but their aunt.
The boys belong to the gentleman, who is a widower."
"Their word ought to be good."
George nodded.
"The boys look wide-awake enough if the father does not. As for the
aunt, she is sweetness itself. Do they still insist that Miss Challoner was
the only person in the room with them at this time?"
"They did last night. I don't know how they will meet this statement of
the doctor's."
"George?"
He leaned nearer.
"Have you ever thought that she might have been a suicide? That she
stabbed herself?
"No, for in that case a weapon would have been found."

"And are you sure that none was?"
"Positive. Such a fact could not have been kept quiet. If a weapon had
been picked up there would be no mystery, and no necessity for further
police investigation."
"And the detectives are still here?
"I just saw one."
"George?"
Again his head came nearer.
"Have they searched the lobby? I believe she had a weapon."
"Laura!
"I know it sounds foolish, but the alternative is so improbable. A family
like that cannot be leagued together in a conspiracy to hide the truth
concerning a matter so serious. To be sure, they may all be
short-sighted, or so little given to observation that they didn't see what
passed before their eyes. The boys look wide-awake