It was on their return in the early morning hours that she had been discovered, lying ill and injured before her sister's fireplace.
One fact was mentioned which set me thinking.

The keys of the club-house had been found lying on a table in the side hall of the Cumberland mansion--the keys which I have already mentioned as missing from my pocket.

An alarming discovery which might have acted as a clew to the suspicious I feared, if their presence there had not been explained by the waitress who had cleared the table after dinner.

Coming upon these keys lying on the floor beside one of the chairs, she had carried them out into the hall and laid them where they would be more readily seen.
She had not recognised the keys, but had taken it for granted that they belonged to Mr.Ranelagh who had dined at the house that night.
They were my keys, and I have already related how I came to drop them on the floor.

Had they but stayed there! Adelaide, or was it Carmel, might not have seen them and been led by some strange, if not tragic, purpose, incomprehensible to us now and possibly never to find full explanation, to enter the secret and forsaken spot where I later found them, the one dead, the other fleeing in frenzy, but not in such a thoughtless frenzy as to forget these keys or to fail to lock the club-house door behind her.