that it was the abode of an ordinary seamstress open to suspicion, if
no more.

Mrs. Daniels, seeing my look of surprise, hastened to provide some
explanation. "It is the room which has always been devoted to
sewing," said she; "and when Emily came, I thought it would be easier
to put up a bed here than to send her upstairs. She was a very nice
girl and disarranged nothing."

I glanced around on the writing-case lying open on a small table in
the centre of the room, on the vase half full of partly withered
roses, on the mantel-piece, the Shakespeare, and Macaulay's History
lying on the stand at my right, thought my own thoughts, but said
nothing.

"You found the door locked this morning?" asked I, after a moment's
scrutiny of the room in which three facts had become manifest: first,
that the girl had not occupied the bed the night before; second, that
there had been some sort of struggle or surprise,--one of the curtains
being violently torn as if grasped by an agitated hand, to say
nothing of a chair lying upset on the floor with one of its legs
broken; third, that the departure, strange as it may seem, had been
by the window.

"Yes," returned she; "but there is a passageway leading from my room
to hers and it was by that means we entered. There was a chair placed
against the door on this side but we easily pushed it away."

I stepped to the window and looked out. Ah, it would not be so very
difficult for a man to gain the street from that spot in a dark