over to the Misses Callender, then?" I inquired, stiffening the muscles of my face to mask my disappointment. 

 "Yes. Perhaps, as you remember so much, you recall the fact that the first two keys were given to the relatives. Miss Marian Callender and her niece believed that Ned had Perry's keys in his pocket, which would mean there were but the two. The Callender ladies are the sole surviving relatives, or, anyhow, the nearest ones. But I've saved my bit of good news from head-quarters till the last. They 'phoned that there are duplicate keys. I thought I recalled something of the sort. Not sure but I suggested making them myself. That pretty millionairess girl might get herself engaged a third time, and if there were any more dead men found with latchkeys in their pockets, sample specimens might be very handy for our fellows." 

 Sam Yelverton finished with a laugh; but I couldn't echo it. I thought of Odell, of Grace Callender's lovely face and her young, spoilt life. I remembered the cruel nicknames "Belladonna" and "Poison Flower."  If even the police prepared for a third tragedy, in case she thought again of marriage, no wonder the poor girl refused the man she loved. 

 "Will duplicates do for you, or do I lose my stage-box?" the big man asked. 

 I said aloud that I thought duplicates would answer my purpose, and silently to myself I said that they must do so. 

 Ten minutes later a policeman of some rank (what rank I couldn't tell, he being my first American specimen) brought in a parcel of considerable size. It contained many affidavits concerning the Callender-Graham tragedy; and on the top of these documents was a small, neatly labelled packet containing two keys. 

 The larger was entirely commonplace; and even the smaller one was at first glance a rather ordinary latchkey, of the Yale order. To an experienced and observant eye, however, it was of curious workmanship. 

 "Not a Yale, you see," said Yelverton, taking a magnifying glass from a small drawer of his tidy desk and passing it on to me.  "What do you make of the thing?" 

 "Foreign, isn't it?" I remarked carelessly. 

 "Yes, we thought so. German—or Italian. Both the brothers had travelled abroad. On a Yale you would read the words 'Yale paracentric,' and a number. There's neither name nor number on that." He flung a gesture toward the key 

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