For my own convenience in copying my extracts, I had numbered the letters from which I intended to transcribe passages before beginning my work.

My pencilled figures in consecutive order were visible in the corner of the superscription of every document I had used.

Those numbered covers I now found intact, and I could thus assure myself that the missing document was one from which I had taken no extract.
This inspired me with a new alarm.

Could it be possible that I had overlooked some scrap of information more important than all that I had transcribed?
I racked my brains in the endeavour to recall the contents of that one missing letter; but although I sat in that social tomb, Miss Judson's best parlour, until I felt my blood becoming of an arctic quality, I could remember nothing that seemed worth remembering in the letters I had laid aside as valueless.
I asked Miss Judson if she had any suspicion of the person who had tampered with the packet.

She looked at me with an icy smile, and answered in ironical accents, which were even more chilling than the atmosphere of her parlour,-- "Do not ask if I know who has tampered with those letters, Mr.
Hawkehurst.