And Violet obeyed him.

Some few days after this, the following statement appeared in all the papers: 

“Owing to some remarkable work done by the firm of —­ & —­, the well-known private detective agency, the claim made by Mrs. George Hammond against the Shuler Life Insurance Company is likely to be allowed without further litigation.  As our readers will remember, the contestant has insisted from the first that the bullet causing her husband’s death came from another pistol than the one found clutched in his own hand.  But while reasons were not lacking to substantiate this assertion, the failure to discover more than the disputed track of a second bullet led to a verdict of suicide, and a refusal of the company to pay.

“But now that bullet has been found.  And where?  In the most startling place in the world, viz.:  in the larynx of the child found lying dead upon the floor beside his father, strangled as was supposed by the weight of that father’s arm.  The theory is, and there seems to be none other, that the father, hearing a suspicious noise at the window, set down the child he was endeavouring to soothe and made for the bed and his own pistol, and, mistaking a reflection of the assassin for the assassin himself, sent his shot sidewise at a mirror just as the other let go the trigger which drove a similar bullet into his breast.  The course of the one was straight and fatal and that of the other deflected.  Striking the mirror at an oblique angle, the bullet fell to the floor where it was picked up by the crawling child, and, as was most natural, thrust at once into his mouth.  Perhaps it felt hot to the little tongue; perhaps the child was simply frightened by some convulsive movement of the father who evidently spent his last moment in an endeavour to reach the child, but, whatever the cause, in the quick gasp it gave, the bullet was drawn into the larynx, strangling him.

“That the father’s arm, in his last struggle, should have fallen directly across the little throat is one of those anomalies which confounds reason and misleads justice by stopping investigation at the very point where truth lies and mystery disappears.

“Mrs. Hammond is to be congratulated that there are detectives who do not give too much credence to outward appearances.”

We expect soon to hear of the capture of the man who sped home the death-dealing bullet.

END OF PROBLEM II

PROBLEM III

AN INTANGIBLE CLUE

“Have you studied the case?”

“Not I.”

“Not studied the case which for the last few days has provided the papers with such conspicuous headlines?”

“I do not read the papers.  I have not looked at one in a whole week.”

“Miss Strange, your social engagements must be of a very pressing nature just now?”