“I will go anywhere and do anything you please, so that we learn the exact truth.  But spare me the curiosity of these people.  The crowd on this side is increasing.”

“We will go in by the kitchen door.  Some one there will show us the way up-stairs.”

And in this manner they entered; not escaping entirely all curious looks, for human nature is human nature, whether in the kitchen or parlor.

In the hall above Mr. Ransom took the precedence.  As they neared the fatal room he motioned the lawyer to wait till he could ascertain if Miss Hazen would be disturbed by their intrusion.  The door, which had been broken in between the two rooms, could not have been put back very securely, and he dreaded incommoding her.  He was gone but a minute.  Almost as soon as the lawyer started to follow him, he could be seen beckoning from poor Georgian’s door.

“Miss Hazen is asleep,” whispered Ransom, as the other drew near.  “We can look about this room with impunity.”

They both entered and the lawyer crossed at once to the window.

“Your wife could never have taken the leap ascribed to her by the woman you call Anitra,” he declared, after a minute’s careful scrutiny of the conditions.  “The balustrade of the adjoining balcony is not only in the way, but the distance is at least five feet from the extreme end of this window-ledge.  A woman accustomed to a life of adventure or to the feats of a gymnasium might do it, but not a lady of Mrs. Ransom’s habits.  If your wife made her way from this room to the balcony outside her sister’s window, she did it by means of the communicating door.”

“But the door was found locked on this side.  There is the key in the lock now.”

“You are sure of this?”

“I was the first one to call attention to it.”

“Then,” began the lawyer judicially, but stopped as he noted the peculiar eagerness of Ransom’s expression, and turned his attention instead to the interior of the room and the various articles belonging to Mrs. Ransom which were to be seen in it.  “The dress your wife wore when she signed her will,” he remarked, pointing to the light green gown hanging on the inside of the door by which they had entered.

Ransom stepped up to it, but did not touch it.  He could see her as she looked in this gown in her memorable passage through the hall the evening before, and, recalling her expression, wondered if they yet understood the nature of her purpose and the determination which gave it such extraordinary vigor.

Mr. Harper called his attention to two other articles of dress hanging in another part of the room.  These were her long gray rain-coat and the hat and veil she had worn on the train.

“She went out bare-headed and in the plain serge dress in which she arrived,” remarked Mr. Harper with a side glance at Ransom.  “I wonder if the girl met on the highway was without hat and dressed in black serge.”