At last I slept, but it was only to rouse again with the same quick realisation of my surroundings, which I had experienced on my recovery from my fainting fit of hours before.  Someone had stopped at our door before hurrying by down the hall.  Who was that someone?  I rose on my elbow, and endeavoured to peer through the dark.  Of course, I could see nothing.  But when I woke a second time, there was enough light in the room, early as it undoubtedly was, for me to detect a letter lying on the carpet just inside the door.

Instantly I was on my feet.  Catching the letter up, I carried it to the window.  Our two names were on it—­Mr. and Mrs. George Anderson:  the writing, Mr. Slater’s.

I glanced over at George.  He was sleeping peacefully.  It was too early to wake him, but I could not lay that letter down unread; was not my name on it?  Tearing it open, I devoured its contents,—­the exclamation I made on reading it, waking George.

The writing was in Mr. Slater’s hand, and the words were: 

“I must request, at the instance of Coroner Heath and such of the police as listened to your adventure, that you make no further mention of what you saw in the street under our windows last night.  The doctors find no bullet in the wound.  This clears Mr. Brotherson.”

V

SWEET LITTLE MISS CLARKE

When we took our seats at the breakfast-table, it was with the feeling of being no longer looked upon as connected in any way with this case.  Yet our interest in it was, if anything, increased, and when I saw George casting furtive glances at a certain table behind me, I leaned over and asked him the reason, being sure that the people whose faces I saw reflected in the mirror directly before us had something to do with the great matter then engrossing us.  His answer conveyed the somewhat exciting information that the four persons seated in my rear were the same four who had been reading at the round table in the mezzanine at the time of Miss Challoner’s death.

Instantly they absorbed all my attention, though I dared not give them a direct look, and continued to observe them only in the glass.

“Is it one family?” I asked.

“Yes, and a very respectable one.  Transients, of course, but very well known in Denver.  The lady is not the mother of the boys, but their aunt.  The boys belong to the gentleman, who is a widower.”

“Their word ought to be good.”

George nodded.

“The boys look wide-awake enough if the father does not.  As for the aunt, she is sweetness itself.  Do they still insist that Miss Challoner was the only person in the room with them at this time?”

“They did last night.  I don’t know how they will meet this statement of the doctor’s.”

“George?”

He leaned nearer.

“Have you ever thought that she might have been a suicide?  That she stabbed herself?”