“You must be pretty short-sighted,” was the woman’s comment.  The sight of the man on his hands and knees amused her.

“Well, I might have a better pair of eyes, I admit.”

From his examination of the carpet, the detective turned to the window.  Outside was the roof to the side piazza of the mansion.  On the tin roof were some dried-up spots of mud.  He looked them over carefully, and came to the conclusion that they were footprints, but how old was a question.

“When did it rain last around here?” he asked.

“We haven’t had a real storm for ten days or two weeks.  We have had several showers, though.”

He took a glance into Mrs. Langmore’s dressing room.  Everything was in perfect order, even to the powder-box and the cologne bottles on the dresser.

“That is all I wish to see up here,” he said, and passed below, where he encountered the policeman in charge.  Like the woman, this officer had taken him to be a lawyer, and he readily consented to let the detective inspect the library.

“Mr. Langmore was found in that chair,” said he.  “He looked as if he had suffered great pain before he died.  I think he was strangled, although he didn’t show the marks of it.”

The library was a richly-furnished apartment.  Along two walls were rows of costly volumes, many relating to modern inventions.  On the walls hung some rare steel engravings, including one of Fulton and his first steamboat.  There was a large library table, with a student’s lamp, a mahogany roller-top desk, half a dozen comfortable chairs, and a small, but well-built safe, which, as said before, was closed and locked.

“The coroner locked and sealed the desk, and put all the loose papers in it,” said the policeman.

There were two windows to the library, and one was close to the side porch, the roof of which the detective had examined from above.  A person dropping from above could easily have entered the library by the window, thus saving himself the trouble of walking through the halls and down the stairs.  Adam Adams looked outside, and saw on the ground a number of footprints, some running to a gravel path but a few feet away.

“Where are the bodies?” he asked, as he continued his examination of the room.

“At Camboin’s morgue.  The doctors have been looking for poison, but they can’t find any.”

The detective got down in front of the safe and examined it critically.  Had it been opened after the murder and then closed again?  That was an important question, but he was unable to answer it.

More by instinct than anything else, he got down and peered under the safe.  A crumpled-up bit of paper caught his eye, and he picked it up and slipped it into his pocket without the policeman being the wiser.

“Has anybody else been here?” he asked.  “I mean any outsiders.”

“A good many folks from the village.”