“’This was no longer a matter of wonder, when, the door having been wrenched from its hinges, they all rushed in.  Across a tub of steaming clothes lifted upon a bench in the open window, they saw the body of this good woman, lying inert and seemingly dead; the frightened child tugging at her skirts.  She was of a robust make, fleshy and fair, and had always been considered a model of health and energy, but at the sight of her helpless figure, thus stricken while at work, the one cry was ’A stroke! till she had been lifted off and laid upon the floor.  Then some discoloration in the water at the bottom of the tub led to a closer examination of her body, and the discovery of a bullet-hole in her breast directly over the heart.

“’As she had been standing with face towards the window, all crowded that way to see where the shot had come from.  As they were on the fourth storey it could not have come from the court upon which the room looked.  It could only have come from the front tenement, towering up before them some twenty feet away.  A single window of the innumerable ones confronting them stood open, and this was the one directly opposite.

“’Nobody was to be seen there or in the room beyond, but during the excitement, one man ran off to call the police and another to hunt up the janitor and ask who occupied this room.

“’His reply threw them all into confusion.  The tenant of that room was the best, the quietest and most respectable man in either building.

“’Then he must be simply careless and the shot an accidental one.  A rush was made for the stairs and soon the whole building was in an uproar.  But when this especial room was reached, it was found locked and on the door a paper pinned up, on which these words were written:  Gone to New York.  Will be back at 6:30!  Words that recalled a circumstance to the janitor.  He had seen the gentleman go out an hour before.  This terminated all inquiry in this direction, though some few of the excited throng were for battering down this door just as they had the other one.  But they were overruled by the janitor, who saw no use in such wholesale destruction, and presently the arrival of the police restored order and limited the inquiry to the rear building, where it undoubtedly belonged.’

“Mr. Gryce,” (here Sweetwater laid by his notes that he might address the old gentleman more directly), “I was with the boys when they made their first official investigation.  This is why you can rely upon the facts as here given.  I followed the investigation closely and missed nothing which could in any way throw light on the case.  It was a mysterious one from the first, and lost nothing by further inquiry into the details.