The Curator offered his arm.  The old man made a move to take it—­then drew himself up with an air of quiet confidence.

“Many thanks,” said he, “but I can go alone.  Rheumatism is my trouble, but these mild days loosen its grip upon my poor old muscles.”  He did not say that the prospect of an interesting inquiry had much the same effect, but the Curator suspected it, possibly because he was feeling just a little bit spry himself.

Steeled as such experienced officers necessarily are to death in all its phases, it was with no common emotion that the aged detective entered the presence of the dead girl and took his first look at this latest victim of mental or moral aberration.  So young! so innocent! so fair!  A schoolgirl, or little more, of a class certainly above the average, whether judged from the contour of her features or the niceties of her dress.  With no evidences of great wealth about her, there was yet something in the cut of her garments and the careful attention to each detail which bespoke not only natural but cultivated taste.  On her breast just above the spot where the cruel dart had entered, a fresh and blooming nosegay still exhaled its perfume—­a tragic detail accentuating the pathos of a death so sudden that the joy with which she had pinned on this simple adornment seemed to linger about her yet.

The detective, with no words for this touching spectacle, stretched out his hand and with a reverent and fatherly touch pressed down the lids over the unseeing eyes.  This office done to the innocent dead, he asked if anything had been found to establish the young girl’s identity.

“Surely,” he observed, “she was not without a purse or handbag.  All young ladies carry them.”

For answer the officer on guard thrust his hand into one of his capacious pockets, and drawing out a neat little bag of knitted beads, passed it over to the detective with the laconic remark: 

“Nothing doing.”

And so it proved.  It held only a pocket handkerchief—­embroidered but without a monogram—­and a memorandum-book without an entry.

“A blind alley, if ever there was one,” muttered Mr. Gryce; and ordering the policeman to replace the bag as nearly as possible on the spot from which it had been taken, he proceeded with the Curator to Room B.

Prepared to encounter a woman of disordered mind, the appearance presented by Mrs. Taylor at his entrance greatly astonished Mr. Gryce.  There was a calmness in her attitude which one would scarcely expect to see in a woman whom mania had just driven into crime.  Surely lunacy does not show such self-restraint; nor does lunacy awaken any such feelings of awe as followed a prolonged scrutiny of her set but determined features.  Only grief of the most intense and sacred character could account for the aspect she presented, and as the man to whom the tragedies of life were of daily occurrence took in this mystery with all its incongruities, he realized, not without a sense of professional pleasure, no doubt, that he had before him an affair calling for the old-time judgment which, for forty or more years, had made his record famous in the police annals of the metropolis.