we were interfering with her in some way.     

       I noticed that Sperry had placed Arthur Wells’s stick unobtrusively on his table, but we secured only rambling and non-pertinent replies to our questions, and whether it was because I knew that outside it was broad day, or because the Wells matter did not come up at all I found a total lack of that sense of the unknown which made all the evening sittings so grisly.     

       I am sure she knew we had wanted something, and that she had failed to give it to us, for when she came out she was depressed and in a state of lowered vitality.     

       “I’m afraid I’m not helping you,” she said. “I’m a little tired, I think.”      

       She was tired. I felt suddenly very sorry for her. She was so pretty and so young—only twenty-six or thereabouts—to be in the grip of forces so relentless. Sperry sent her home in his car, and took to pacing the floor of his office.     

       “I’m going to give it up, Horace,” he said. “Perhaps you are right. We may be on the verge of some real discovery. But while I’m interested, so       interested that it interferes with my work, I’m frankly afraid to go on. There are several reasons.”      

       I argued with him. There could be no question that if things were left as they were, a number of people would go through life convinced that Elinor Wells had murdered her husband. Look at the situation. She had sent out all the servants and the governess, surely an unusual thing in an establishment of that sort. And Miss Jeremy had been vindicated in three points; some stains had certainly been washed up, we had found the key where she had stated it to be, and Arthur had certainly been shaving himself.     

       “In other words,” I argued, “we can’t stop, Sperry. You can’t stop. But my idea would be that our investigations be purely scientific and not criminal.”      

       “Also, in other words,” he said, “you think we will discover something, so you suggest that we compound a felony and keep it to ourselves!”      

       “Exactly,” I said drily.     

       It is of course possible that my nerves were somewhat unstrung during the days that followed. 

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