Initials Only | Page 9

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 enough, but who can tell? I would sooner believe that--"
I stopped short so suddenly that George looked startled. My attention had been caught by something new I saw in the mirror upon which my attention was fixed. A man was looking in from the corridor behind, at the four persons we were just discussing. He was watching them intently, and I thought I knew his face.
"What kind of a looking person was the man who took you outside last night?" I inquired of George, with my eyes still on this furtive watcher.
"A fellow to make you laugh. A perfect character, Laura; hideously homely but agreeable enough. I took quite a fancy to him. Why?"
"I am looking at him now."
"Very likely. He's deep in this affair. Just an everyday detective, but ambitious, I suppose, and quite alive to the importance of being thorough."
"He is watching those people. No, he isn't. How quickly he disappeared!"
"Yes, he's mercurial in all his movements. Laura, we must get out of this. There happens to be something else in the world for me to do than to sit around and follow up murder clews."
But we began to doubt if others agreed with him, when on passing out we were stopped in the lobby by this same detective, who had something to say to George, and drew him quickly aside.
"What does he want?" I asked, as soon as George had returned to my side.
"He wants me