The Circular Study

he had left outside, had the valet removed before taking Miss Butterworth back into the s

y the experiment we have just made. Bartow i

on to the young people. You have h

N

he old man

N

orth looked

ld inform you who these were. If it was important enough for the dying man

something like this: 'I return your daughter to you. She is here. Neither she

That is Mr. A

every reason

bed with these words was found clinched betwe

the specimens we have seen of his sig

s being the only one that could be considered safe from search. And the girl! Her first words on coming to herself were: 'You have left that line of writing behind.

hem often enough to myself. First, t

man's daughter, certainly, for that would necessitate her being a small child. Besides, if thes

ve said the same

whom, then? For the old ge

ecially as the next words of this strange communication are: 'She is here.' Now the only woman who was the

er had just been written? It might have been an

a sheet of letter paper lying on the desk, and the pen with which they were inscribed-you mu

, with the girl I saw. And she is not Evelyn or he would not have repeated in this note the bird's catch-word, 'Remember

t how explain the violent part played by the young man, who is not mentioned in these abrupt and hastil

ort. Those words, now. There were some o

ber Evelyn!' They bespoke a resolve. 'Nei

, Mr. Gryce. Could he have dealt that blow hi

t he had made some preparation for possible death. It may have come sooner than he expected and in another way, but it was a thought he had indulged in, and-madam, I have a confession to make also. I have not been quite fair to my most valued colleague. The study-that most remarkable of rooms-contains a secret which has not been imparted to you; a very peculiar one, madam, which was revealed to me in a

ld-world tragedy we are unearthing here! I declare"-and the good lady actually rubbed her eyes-"I feel as if transported ba

was one of those men. Romanticism tinged all his acts, even the death he died. Nor did it cea

of another's superstition. That shows the presen

have had a grain of hard sense in his make-up. All his contrivance

infecting the very air of this study. I could almost wish it

ready pointed it out. We must trace the young couple who were present

positive that we are lost in the woods." And Miss Butterworth rose. She fel

leave the place himself. They, however, stopped long enough to cast one f

ing made by the removal of that picture on the stair landing. Wouldn't you sa

the one. With the picture hung up on the

. That picture must have been drawn aside several times

gh and low, Mr. Gryce! What goes on at the

less of irony than sadness in it. Was he beginning to realize that years tell even on the most sag