Maud had felt mingled with her sorrow a suspicion of remorse.  She could not help remembering that Sam considered Farnham his rival, with how little reason she knew better than any one.  She could understand how her beauty might have driven him to violence; but when the story of the robbery transpired also—­as it did in the course of the morning,—­she was greatly perplexed.  When she joined in the lamentations of her parents and said she never could have believed that of Sam Sleeny, she was thinking of the theft, and not of the furious assault.  When they had all, however, exhausted their limited store of reflections, a thing took place which increased the horror and the certainty of Mr. and Mrs. Matchin, and left Maud a prey to a keener doubt and anxiety than ever.  Late in the afternoon a sharp-faced man, with a bright eye and a red mustache, came to the house and demanded in the name of the law to be shown Sam’s bedroom.  He made several notes and picked up some trifling articles, for which he gave Mr. Matchin receipts.  Corning out of the room, he looked carefully at the door-knob.  “Seems all right,” he said.  Then turning to Matchin, he said, with professional severity, “What door did he generally come in by?”

“Sometimes one and sometimes another,” said Saul, determined not to give any more information than he must.

“Well, I’ll look at both,” the detective said.

The first one stood his scrutiny without effect, but at the second his eye sparkled and his cheek flushed with pleasure, when he saw the faint, red-dish-brown streaks which Offitt had left there the night before.  He could not express his exultation; turning to Saul, “There’s where he came in last night, any way.”

“He didn’t do no such a thing,” replied Saul.  “That door I locked myself last night before he came in.”

“Oh, you did?  So you’re sure he came in at the other door, are you.  We will see if he could get in any other way.”

Walking around the corner, he saw the ladder where Offitt had left it.

“Hello! that’s his window, ain’t it?”

Without waiting for an answer the detective ran up the ladder, studying every inch of its surface as he ran.  He came down positively radiant, and slapped Saul heartily on the shoulder.

“All right, old man.  I’ll trouble you to keep that ladder and that door just as they are.  They are important papers.  Why don’t you see?” he continued—­“bless your innocent old heart, he comes home with his hands just reg’larly dripping with murder.  He fumbles at that door, finds it locked, and so gets that ladder, histes it up to the window, and hops into bed as easy as any Christian schoolboy in town, and he thinks he’s all right—­but he never thinks of Tony Smart, your humble servant.”