I didn't find anything of a remarkably suspicious nature until this afternoon, pretty late, when I made the discovery about the safe in the boudoir--that all the articles I'd mentioned had disappeared.

Then I began to examine a waste-paper basket in the boudoir--I'd personally seen Lady Carstairs tear up some letters which she received yesterday morning by the first post, and throw the scraps into that basket, which hadn't been emptied since.

And I found this, gentlemen--and you can, perhaps, draw some conclusion from it--I've had no difficulty in drawing one myself." He laid on the table a torn scrap of paper, over which all three of us at once bent.

There was no more on it than the terminations of lines--but the wording was certainly suggestive:-- "....

at once, quietly ....