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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Difficult Problem, by
+Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Difficult Problem
+       1900
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2007 [EBook #22807]
+Last Updated: December 18, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DIFFICULT PROBLEM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+A DIFFICULT PROBLEM
+
+By Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+Copyright The F. M. Lupton Publishing Company. 1900
+
+
+
+“A LADY to see you, sir.”
+
+I looked up and was at once impressed by the grace and beauty of the
+person thus introduced to me.
+
+“Is there anything I can do to serve you?” I asked, rising.
+
+She cast me a child-like look full of trust and candor as she seated
+herself in the chair I pointed out to her.
+
+“I believe so, I hope so,” she earnestly assured me. “I--I am in great
+trouble. I have just lost my husband--but it is not that. It is the slip
+of paper I found on my dresser, and which--which----”
+
+She was trembling violently and her words were fast becoming incoherent.
+I calmed her and asked her to relate her story just as it had happened;
+and after a few minutes of silent struggle she succeeded in collecting
+herself sufficiently to respond with some degree of connection and
+self-possession.
+
+“I have been married six months. My name is Lucy Holmes. For the last
+few weeks my husband and myself have been living in an apartment house
+on Fifty-ninth Street, and as we had not a care in the world, we were
+very happy till Mr. Holmes was called away on business to Philadelphia.
+This was two weeks ago. Five days later I received an affectionate
+letter from him, in which he promised to come back the next day; and the
+news so delighted me that I accepted an invitation to the theater
+from some intimate friends of ours. The next morning I naturally felt
+fatigued and rose late; but I was very cheerful, for I expected my
+husband at noon. And now comes the perplexing mystery. In the course
+of dressing myself I stepped to my bureau, and seeing a small
+newspaper-slip attached to the cushion by a pin, I drew it off and read
+it. It was a death notice, and my hair rose and my limbs failed me as I
+took in its fatal and incredible words.
+
+“‘Died this day at the Colonnade, James Forsythe De Witt Holmes. New
+York papers please copy.’
+
+“James Forsythe De Witt Holmes was my husband, and his last letter,
+which was at that very moment lying beside the cushion, had been dated
+from the Colonnade. Was I dreaming or under the spell of some frightful
+hallucination which led me to misread the name on the slip of paper
+before me? I could not determine. My head, throat and chest seemed bound
+about with iron, so that I could neither speak nor breathe with freedom,
+and, suffering thus, I stood staring at this demoniacal bit of paper
+which in an instant had brought the shadow of death upon my happy life.
+Nor was I at all relieved when a little later I flew with the notice
+into a neighbor’s apartment, and praying her to read it for me, found
+that my eyes had not deceived me and that the name was indeed my
+husband’s and the notice one of death.
+
+“Not from my own mind but from hers came the first suggestion of
+comfort.
+
+“‘It cannot be your husband who is meant,’ said she; ‘but some one of
+the same name. Your husband wrote to you yesterday, and this person must
+have been dead at least two days for the printed notice of his decease
+to have reached New York. Some one has remarked the striking similarity
+of names, and wishing to startle you, cut the slip out and pinned it on
+your cushion.’
+
+“I certainly knew of no one inconsiderate enough to do this, but the
+explanation was so plausible, I at once embraced it and sobbed aloud in
+my relief. But in the midst of my rejoicing I heard the bell ring in my
+apartment, and running thither, encountered a telegraph boy holding in
+his outstretched hand the yellow envelope which so often bespeaks death
+or disaster. The sight took my breath away. Summoning my maid, whom I
+saw hastening towards me from an inner room, I begged her to open the
+telegram for me. Sir, I saw in her face, before she had read the first
+line, a confirmation of my very worst fears. My husband was----”
+
+The young widow, choked with her emotions, paused, recovered herself for
+the second time, and then went on.
+
+“I had better show you the telegram.” Taking it from her pocket-book,
+she held it towards me. I read it at a glance. It was short, simple and
+direct.
+
+“Come at once. Your husband found dead in his room this morning. Doctors
+say heart disease. Please telegraph.”
+
+“You see it says this morning,” she explained, placing her delicate
+finger on the word she so eagerly quoted. “That means a week ago
+Wednesday, the same day on which the printed slip recording his death
+was found on my cushion. Do you not see something very strange in this?”
+
+I did; but, before I ventured to express myself on this subject,
+I desired her to tell me what she had learned in her visit to
+Philadelphia.
+
+Her answer was simple and straightforward.
+
+“But little more than you find in this telegram. He died in his room.
+He was found lying on the floor near the bell button, which he had
+evidently risen to touch. One hand was clenched on his chest, but his
+face wore a peaceful look as if death had come too suddenly to cause him
+much suffering. His bed was undisturbed; he had died before retiring,
+possibly in the act of packing his trunk, for it was found nearly ready
+for the expressman. Indeed, there was every evidence of his intention to
+leave on an early morning train. He had even desired to be awakened at
+six o’clock; and it was his failure to respond to the summons of the
+bell-boy, which led to so early a discovery of his death. He had never
+complained of any distress in breathing, and we had always considered
+him a perfectly healthy man; but there was no reason for assigning any
+other cause than heart-failure to his sudden death, and so the burial
+certificate was made out to that effect, and I was allowed to bring
+him home and bury him in our vault at Wood-lawn. But--” and here her
+earnestness dried up the tears which had been flowing freely during
+this recital of her husband’s lonely death and sad burial,--“do you not
+think an investigation should be made into a death preceded by a
+false obituary notice? For I found when I was in Philadelphia that no
+paragraph such as I had found pinned to my cushion had been inserted in
+any paper there, nor had any other man of the same name ever registered
+at the Colonnade, much less died there.”
+
+“Have you this notice with you?” I asked.
+
+She immediately produced it, and while I was glancing it over remarked:
+
+“Some persons would give a superstitious explanation to the whole
+matter; think I had received a supernatural warning and been satisfied
+with what they would call a spiritual manifestation. But I have not a
+bit of such folly in my composition. Living hands set up the type and
+printed the words which gave me so deathly a shock; and hands, with a
+real purpose in them, cut it from the paper and pinned it to my cushion
+for me to see when I woke on that fatal morning. But whose hands? That
+is what I want you to discover.”
+
+I had caught the fever of her suspicions long before this and now felt
+justified in showing my interest.
+
+“First, let me ask,” said I, “who has access to your rooms besides your
+maid?”
+
+“No one; absolutely no one.”
+
+“And what of her?”
+
+“She is innocence itself. She is no common housemaid, but a girl my
+mother brought up, who for love of me consents to do such work in the
+household as my simple needs require.”
+
+“I should like to see her.”
+
+“There is no objection to your doing so; but you will gain nothing by
+it. I have already talked the subject over with her a dozen times and
+she is as much puzzled by it as I am myself. She says she cannot see how
+any one could have found an entrance to my room during my sleep, as the
+doors were all locked. Yet, as she very naturally observes, some one
+must have done so, for she was in my bedroom herself just before I
+returned from the theater, and can swear, if necessary, that no such
+slip of paper was to be seen on my cushion, at that time, for her duties
+led her directly to my bureau and kept her there for full five minutes.”
+
+“And you believed her?” I suggested.
+
+“Implicitly.”
+
+“In what direction, then, do your suspicions turn?”
+
+“Alas! in no direction. That is the trouble. I don’t know whom to
+mistrust. It was because I was told that you had the credit of seeing
+light where others can see nothing but darkness, that I have sought your
+aid in this emergency. For the uncertainty surrounding this matter is
+killing me and will make my sorrow quite unendurable if I cannot obtain
+relief from it.”
+
+“I do not wonder,” I began, struck by the note of truth in her tones.
+“And I shall certainly do what I can for you. But before we go any
+further, let us examine this scrap of newspaper and see what we can make
+out of it.”
+
+I had already noted two or three points in connection with it, to which
+I now proceeded to direct her attention.
+
+“Have you compared this notice,” I pursued, “with such others as you
+find every day in the papers?”
+
+“No,” was her eager answer. “Is it not like them all----”
+
+“Read,” was my quiet interruption. “‘On this day at the Colonnade--’
+On what day? The date is usually given in all the _bona-fide_ notices I
+have seen.”
+
+“Is it?” she asked, her eyes moist with un-shed tears, opening widely in
+her astonishment.
+
+“Look in the papers on your return home and see. Then the print. Observe
+that the type is identical on both sides of this make-believe clipping,
+while in fact there is always a perceptible difference between that used
+in the obituary column and that to be found in the columns devoted to
+other matter. Notice also,” I continued, holding up the scrap of paper
+between her and the light, “that the alignment on one side is not
+exactly parallel with that on the other; a discrepancy which would not
+exist if both sides had been printed on a newspaper press. These facts
+lead me to conclude, first, that the effort to match the type exactly
+was the mistake of a man who tries to do too much; and secondly, that
+one of the sides at least, presumably that containing the obituary
+notice, was printed on a hand-press, on the blank side of a piece of
+galley proof picked up in some newspaper office.”
+
+“Let me see.” And stretching out her hand with the utmost eagerness, she
+took the slip and turned it over. Instantly a change took place in her
+countenance. She sank back in her seat and a blush of manifest confusion
+suffused her cheeks. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “what will you think of me! I
+brought this scrap of print into the house _myself_ and it was _I_ who
+pinned it on the cushion with my own hands! I remember it now. The sight
+of those words recalls the whole occurrence.”
+
+“Then there is one mystery less for us to solve,” I remarked, somewhat
+dryly.
+
+“Do you think so,” she protested, with a deprecatory look. “For me the
+mystery deepens, and becomes every minute more serious. It is true that
+I brought this scrap of newspaper into the house, and that it had, then
+as now, the notice of my husband’s death upon it, but the time of
+my bringing it in was Tuesday night, and he was not found dead till
+Wednesday morning.”
+
+“A discrepancy worth noting,” I remarked.
+
+“Involving a mystery of some importance,” she concluded.
+
+I agreed to that.
+
+“And since we have discovered how the slip came into your room, we can
+now proceed to the clearing up of this mystery,” I observed. “You can,
+of course, inform me where you procured this clipping which you say you
+brought into the house?”
+
+“Yes. You may think it strange, but when I alighted from the carriage
+that night, a man on the sidewalk put this tiny scrap of paper into my
+hand. It was done so mechanically that it made no more impression on my
+mind than the thrusting of an advertisement upon me. Indeed, I supposed
+it was an advertisement, and I only wonder that I retained it in my hand
+at all. But that I did do so, and that, in a moment of abstraction I
+went so far as to pin it to my cushion, is evident from the fact that a
+vague memory remains in my mind of having read this recipe which you see
+printed on the reverse side of the paper.”
+
+“It was the recipe, then, and not the obituary notice which attracted
+your attention the night before?”
+
+“Probably, but in pinning it to the cushion, it was the obituary notice
+that chanced to come uppermost. Oh, why should I not have remembered
+this till now! Can you understand my forgetting a matter of so much
+importance?”
+
+“Yes,” I allowed, after a momentary consideration of her ingenuous
+countenance. “The words you read in the morning were so startling that
+they disconnected themselves from those you had carelessly glanced at
+the night before.”
+
+“That is it,” she replied; “and since then I have had eyes for the one
+side only. How could I think of the other? But who could have printed
+this thing and who was the man who put it into my hand? He looked like a
+beggar but--Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed, her cheeks flushing scarlet and
+her eyes flashing with a feverish, almost alarming, glitter.
+
+“What is it now?” I asked. “Another recollection?”
+
+“Yes.” She spoke so low I could hardly hear her. “He coughed and----”
+
+“And what?” I encouragingly suggested, seeing that she was under some
+new and overwhelming emotion.
+
+“That cough had a familiar sound, now that I think of it. It was like
+that of a friend who--But no, no; I will not wrong him by any false
+surmises. He would stoop to much, but not to that; yet----”
+
+The flush on her cheeks had died away, but the two vivid spots which
+remained showed the depth of her excitement.
+
+“Do you think,” she suddenly asked, “that a man out of revenge might
+plan to frighten me by a false notice of my husband’s death, and that
+God to punish him, made the notice a prophecy?”
+
+“I think a man influenced by the spirit of revenge might do almost
+anything,” I answered, purposely ignoring the latter part of her
+question.
+
+“But I always considered him a good man. At least I never looked upon
+him as a wicked one. Every other beggar we meet has a cough; and yet,”
+ she added after a moment’s pause, “if it was not he who gave me this
+mortal shock, who was it? He is the only person in the world I ever
+wronged.”
+
+“Had you not better tell me his name?” I suggested.
+
+“No, I am in too great doubt. I should hate to do him a second injury.”
+
+“You cannot injure him if he is innocent. My methods are very safe.”
+
+“If I could forget his cough! but it had that peculiar catch in it that
+I remembered so well in the cough of John Graham. I did not pay any
+especial heed to it at the time. Old days and old troubles were far
+enough from my thoughts; but now that my suspicions are raised, that
+low, choking sound comes back to me in a strangely persistent way, and
+I seem to see a well-remembered form in the stooping figure of this
+beggar. Oh, I hope the good God will forgive me if I attribute to this
+disappointed man a wickedness he never committed.”
+
+“Who is John Graham?” I urged, “and what was the nature of the wrong you
+did him?”
+
+She rose, cast me one appealing glance, and perceiving that I meant to
+have her whole story, turned towards the fire and stood warming her feet
+before the hearth, with her face turned away from my gaze.
+
+“I was once engaged to marry him,” she began. “Not because I loved him,
+but because we were very poor--I mean my mother and myself--and he had a
+home and seemed both good and generous. The day came when we were to be
+married--this was in the West, way out in Kansas--and I was even dressed
+for the wedding, when a letter came from my uncle here, a rich uncle,
+very rich, who had never had anything to do with my mother since her
+marriage, and in it he promised me fortune and everything else desirable
+in life if I would come to him, unencumbered by any foolish ties. Think
+of it! And I within half an hour of marriage with a man I had never
+loved and now suddenly hated. The temptation was overwhelming, and
+heartless as my conduct may appear to you, I succumbed to it. Telling my
+lover that I had changed my mind, I dismissed the minister when he came,
+and announced my intention of proceeding East as soon as possible. Mr.
+Graham was simply paralyzed by his disappointment, and during the few
+days which intervened before my departure, I was haunted by his face,
+which was like that of a man who had died from some overwhelming shock.
+But when I was once free of the town, especially after I arrived in New
+York, I forgot alike his misery and himself. Everything I saw was so
+beautiful! Life was so full of charm, and my uncle so delighted with me
+and everything I did! Then there was James Holmes, and after I had
+seen him--But I cannot talk of that. We loved each other, and under the
+surprise of this new delight how could I be expected to remember the
+man I had left behind me in that barren region in which I had spent my
+youth? But he did not forget the misery I had caused him. He followed
+me to New York: and on the morning I was married found his way into the
+house, and mixing with the wedding guests, suddenly appeared before me
+just as I was receiving the congratulations of my friends. At sight of
+him I experienced all the terror he had calculated upon causing, but
+remembering at whose side I stood, I managed to hide my confusion under
+an aspect of apparent haughtiness. This irritated John Graham. Flushing
+with anger, and ignoring my imploring look, he cried peremptorily,
+‘Present me to your husband!’ and I felt forced to present him. But
+his name produced no effect upon Mr. Holmes. I had never told him of my
+early experience with this man, and John Graham, perceiving this, cast
+me a bitter glance of disdain and passed on, muttering between his
+teeth, ‘False to me and false to him! Your punishment be upon you!’ and
+I felt as if I had been cursed.”
+
+She stopped here, moved by emotions readily to be understood. Then with
+quick impetuosity she caught up the thread of her story and went on.
+
+“That was six months ago; and again I forgot. My mother died and my
+husband soon absorbed my every thought. How could I dream that this man,
+who was little more than a memory to me and scarcely that, was secretly
+planning mischief against me? Yet this scrap about which we have talked
+so much may have been the work of his hands; and even my husband’s
+death----”
+
+She did not finish, but her face, which was turned towards me, spoke
+volumes.
+
+“Your husband’s death shall be inquired into,” I assured her. And she,
+exhausted by the excitement of her discoveries, asked that she might be
+excused from further discussion of the subject at that time.
+
+As I had no wish, myself, to enter any more fully into the matter just
+then, I readily acceded to her request, and the pretty widow left me.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Obviously the first fact to be settled was whether Mr. Holmes had died
+from purely natural causes. I accordingly busied myself the next few
+days with this question, and was fortunate enough to so interest the
+proper authorities that an order was issued for the exhumation and
+examination of the body.
+
+The result was disappointing. No traces of poison were to be, found in
+the stomach nor was there to be seen on the body any mark of violence,
+with the exception of a minute prick upon one of his thumbs.
+
+This speck was so small that it escaped every eye but my own.
+
+The authorities assuring the widow that the doctor’s certificate given
+her in Philadelphia was correct, he was again interred. But I was not
+satisfied; neither do I think she was. I was confident that his
+death was not a natural one, and entered upon one of those secret and
+prolonged investigations which have constituted the pleasure of my life
+for so many years. First, I visited the Colonnade in Philadelphia, and
+being allowed to see the room in which Mr. Holmes died, went through it
+carefully. As it had not been used since that time I had some hopes of
+coming upon a clue.
+
+But it was a vain hope and the only result of my journey to this place
+was the assurance I received that the gentleman had spent the entire
+evening preceding his death, in his own room, where he had been brought
+several letters and one small package, the latter coming by mail. With
+this one point gained--if it was a point--I went back to New York.
+
+Calling on Mrs. Holmes, I asked her if, while her husband was away she
+had sent him anything besides letters, and upon her replying to the
+contrary, requested to know if in her visit to Philadelphia she had
+noted among her husband’s effects anything that was new or unfamiliar to
+her, “For he received a package while there,” I explained, “and though
+its contents may have been perfectly harmless, it is just as well for us
+to be assured of this, before going any further.”
+
+“Oh, you think, then, he was really the victim of some secret violence.”
+
+“We have no proof of it,” I said. “On the contrary, we are assured that
+he died from natural causes. But the incident of the newspaper slip
+outweighs, in my mind, the doctor’s conclusions, and until the mystery
+surrounding that obituary notice has been satisfactorily explained by
+its author, I shall hold to the theory that your husband has been made
+away with in some strange and seemingly unaccountable manner, which it
+is our duty to bring to light.”
+
+“You are right! You are right! Oh, John Graham!”
+
+She was so carried away by this plain expression of my belief that she
+forgot the question I had put to her.
+
+“You have not told whether or not you found anything among your
+husband’s effects that can explain this mystery,” I suggested.
+
+She at once became attentive.
+
+“Nothing,” said she: “his trunks were already packed and his bag nearly
+so. There were a few things lying about the room which were put into
+the latter, but I saw nothing but what was familiar to me among them;
+at least, I think not; perhaps we had better look through his trunk and
+see. I have not had the heart to open it since I came back.”
+
+As this was exactly what I wished, I said as much, and she led me into a
+small room, against the wall of which stood a trunk with a traveling-bag
+on top of it. Opening the latter, she spread the contents out on the
+trunk.
+
+“I know all these things,” she sadly murmured, the tears welling in her
+eyes.
+
+“This?” I inquired, lifting up a bit of coiled wire with two or three
+little rings dangling from it.
+
+“No; why, what is that?”
+
+“It looks like a puzzle of some kind.”
+
+“Then it is of no consequence. My husband was forever amusing himself
+over some such contrivance. All his friends knew how well he liked these
+toys and frequently sent them to him. This one evidently reached him in
+Philadelphia.”
+
+Meanwhile I was eying the bit of wire curiously. It was undoubtedly a
+puzzle, but it had appendages to it that I did not understand.
+
+“It is more than ordinarily complicated,” I observed, moving the rings
+up and down in a vain endeavor to work them off.
+
+“The better he would like it,” said she.
+
+I kept on working with the rings. Suddenly I gave a painful start. A
+little prong in the handle of the toy had started out and pricked me.
+
+“You had better not handle it,” said I, and laid it down. But the next
+minute I took it up again and put it in my pocket. The prick made by
+this treacherous bit of mechanism was in or near the same place on my
+thumb as the one I had noticed on the hand of the deceased Mr. Holmes.
+
+There was a fire in the room, and before proceeding further, I
+cauterized that prick with the end of a red-hot poker. Then I made my
+adieux to Mrs. Holmes and went immediately to a chemist friend of mine.
+
+“Test the end of this bit of steel for me,” said I. “I have reason to
+believe it carries with it a deadly poison.”
+
+He took the toy, promised to subject it to every test possible and let
+me know the result. Then I went home. I felt ill, or imagined that I
+did, which under the circumstances was almost as bad.
+
+Next day, however, I was quite well, with the exception of a certain
+inconvenience in my thumb. But not till the following week did I
+receive the chemist’s report. It overthrew my whole theory. He had found
+nothing, and returned me the bit of steel.
+
+But I was not convinced.
+
+“I will hunt up this John Graham,” thought I, “and study him.”
+
+But this was not so easy a task as it may appear. As Mrs. Holmes
+possessed no clue to the whereabouts of her quondam lover, I had nothing
+to aid me in my search for him, save her rather vague description of his
+personal appearance and the fact that he was constantly interrupted
+in speaking by a low, choking cough. However, my natural perseverance
+carried me through. After seeing and interviewing a dozen John Grahams
+without result, I at last lit upon a man of that name who presented
+a figure of such vivid unrest and showed such desperate hatred of his
+fellows, that I began to entertain hopes of his being the person I
+was in search of. But determined to be sure of this before proceeding
+further, I confided my suspicions to Mrs. Holmes, and induced her to
+accompany me down to a certain spot on the “Elevated” from which I
+had more than once seen this man go by to his usual lounging place in
+Printing-house Square.
+
+She showed great courage in doing this, for she had such a dread of him
+that she was in a state of nervous excitement from the moment she left
+her house, feeling sure that she would attract his attention and thus
+risk a disagreeable encounter. But she might have spared herself these
+fears. He did not even glance up in passing us, and it was mainly by his
+walk she recognized him. But she did recognize him; and this nerved
+me at once to set about the formidable task of fixing upon him a crime
+which was not even admitted as a fact by the authorities.
+
+He was a man-about-town, living, to all appearance, by his wits. He was
+to be seen mostly in the downtown portions of the city, standing for
+hours in front of some newspaper office, gnawing at his finger-ends, and
+staring at the passers-by with a hungry look that alarmed the timid and
+provoked alms from the benevolent. Needless to say that he rejected the
+latter expression of sympathy, with angry contempt.
+
+His face was long and pallid, his cheek-bones high and his mouth bitter
+and resolute in expression. He wore neither beard nor mustache, but made
+up for their lack by an abundance of light brown hair, which hung very
+nearly to his shoulders. He stooped in standing, but as soon as he
+moved, showed decision and a certain sort of pride which caused him to
+hold his head high and his body more than usually erect. With all these
+good points his appearance was decidedly sinister, and I did not wonder
+that Mrs. Holmes feared him.
+
+My next move was to accost him. Pausing before the doorway in which
+he stood, I addressed him some trivial question. He answered me with
+sufficient politeness, but with a grudging attention which betrayed the
+hold which his own thoughts had upon him. He coughed while speaking
+and his eye, which for a moment rested on mine, produced upon me an
+impression for which I was hardly prepared, great as was my prejudice
+against him. There was such an icy composure in it; the composure of
+an envenomed nature conscious of its superiority to all surprise. As I
+lingered to study him more closely, the many dangerous qualities of the
+man became more and more apparent to me; and convinced that to proceed
+further without deep and careful thought, would be to court failure
+where triumph would set me up for life, I gave up all present attempt
+at enlisting him in conversation, and went my way in an inquiring and
+serious mood.
+
+In fact, my position was a peculiar one, and the problem I had set for
+myself one of unusual difficulty. Only by means of some extraordinary
+device such as is seldom resorted to by the police of this or any other
+nation, could I hope to arrive at the secret of this man’s conduct,
+and triumph in a matter which to all appearance was beyond human
+penetration.
+
+But what device? I knew of none, nor through two days and nights of
+strenuous thought did I receive the least light on the subject. Indeed,
+my mind seemed to grow more and more confused the more I urged it into
+action. I failed to get inspiration indoors or out; and feeling
+my health suffer from the constant irritation of my recurring
+disappointment, I resolved to take a day off and carry myself and my
+perplexities into the country.
+
+I did so. Governed by an impulse which I did not then understand, I went
+to a small town in New Jersey and entered the first house on which I saw
+the sign “Room to Let.” The result was most fortunate. No sooner had I
+crossed the threshold of the neat and homely apartment thrown open to my
+use, than it recalled a room in which I had slept two years before and
+in which I had read a little book I was only too glad to remember at
+this moment. Indeed, it seemed as if a veritable inspiration had come to
+me through this recollection, for though the tale to which I allude was
+a simple child’s story written for moral purposes, it contained an idea
+which promised to be invaluable to me at this juncture. Indeed, by means
+of it, I believed myself to have solved the problem that was puzzling
+me, and relieved beyond expression, I paid for the night’s lodging
+I had now determined to forego, and returned immediately to New York,
+having spent just fifteen minutes in the town where I had received this
+happy inspiration.
+
+My first step on entering the city was to order a dozen steel coils made
+similar to the one which I still believed answerable for James Holmes’
+death. My next to learn as far as possible all of John Graham’s haunts
+and habits. At a week’s end I had the springs and knew almost as well as
+he did himself where he was likely to be found at all times of the day
+and night. I immediately acted upon this knowledge. Assuming a slight
+disguise, I repeated my former stroll through Printing-house Square,
+looking into each doorway as I passed. John Graham was in one of them,
+staring in his old way at the passing crowd, but evidently seeing
+nothing but the images formed by his own disordered brain. A
+manuscript-roll stuck out of his breast-pocket, and from the way his
+nervous fingers fumbled with it, I began to understand the restless
+glitter of his eyes, which were as full of wretchedness as any eyes I
+have ever seen.
+
+Entering the doorway where he stood, I dropped at his feet one of the
+small steel coils with which I was provided. He did not see it. Stopping
+near him I directed his attention to it by saying:
+
+“Pardon me, but did I not see something drop out of your hand?”
+
+He started, glanced at the seeming inoffensive toy at which I pointed,
+and altered so suddenly and so vividly that it became instantly apparent
+that the surprise I had planned for him was fully as keen and searching
+a one as I had anticipated. Recoiling sharply, he gave me a quick look,
+then glanced down again at his feet as if half expecting to find the
+object vanished which had startled him. But, perceiving it still
+lying there, he crushed it viciously with his heel, and uttering some
+incoherent words, dashed impetuously from the building.
+
+Confident that he would regret this hasty impulse and return, I withdrew
+a few steps and waited. And sure enough, in less than five minutes he
+came slinking back. Picking up the coil with more than one sly look
+about, he examined it closely. Suddenly he gave a sharp cry and went
+staggering out. Had he discovered that the seeming puzzle possessed the
+same invisible spring which had made the one handled by James Holmes so
+dangerous?
+
+Certain as to the place he would be found in next, I made a short cut to
+an obscure little saloon in Nassau Street, where I took up my stand in
+a spot convenient for seeing without being seen. In ten minutes he was
+standing at the bar asking for a drink.
+
+“Whiskey!” he cried, “straight.”
+
+It was given him; but as he set the empty glass down on the counter, he
+saw lying before him another of the steel springs, and was so
+confounded by the sight that the proprietor, who had put it there at my
+instigation, thrust out his hand toward him as if half afraid he would
+fall.
+
+“Where did that--that _thing_ come from?” stammered John Graham,
+ignoring the other’s gesture and pointing with a trembling hand at the
+seemingly insignificant bit of wire between them.
+
+“Didn’t it drop from your coat-pocket?” inquired the proprietor. “It
+wasn’t lying here before you came in.”
+
+With a horrible oath the unhappy man turned and fled from the place. I
+lost sight of him after that for three hours, then I suddenly came upon
+him again. He was walking up town with a set purpose in his face that
+made him look more dangerous than ever. Of course I followed him,
+expecting him to turn towards Fifty-ninth Street, but at the corner of
+Madison Avenue and Forty-seventh Street he changed his mind and dashed
+toward Third Avenue. At Park Avenue he faltered and again turned north,
+walking for several blocks as if the fiends were behind him. I began to
+think that he was but attempting to walk off his excitement, when, at a
+sudden rushing sound in the cut beside us, he stopped and trembled. An
+express train was shooting by. As it disappeared in the tunnel beyond,
+he looked about him with a blanched face and wandering eye; but his
+glance did not turn my way, or if it did, he failed to attach any
+meaning to my near presence.
+
+He began to move on again and this time towards the bridge spanning
+the cut. I followed him very closely. In the center of it he paused and
+looked down at the track beneath him. Another train was approaching. As
+it came near he trembled from head to foot, and catching at the railing
+against which he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a
+puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping
+with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had
+taken the form of a spiral and was sailing away before him in what to
+his disordered imagination must have looked like a gigantic image of
+the coil with which twice before on this day he had found himself
+confronted.
+
+It may have been chance and it may have been providence; but whichever
+it was it saved him. He could not face that semblance of his haunting
+thought; and turning away he cowered down on the neighboring curbstone,
+where he sat for several minutes, with his head buried in his hands;
+when he rose again he was his own daring and sinister self. Knowing that
+he was now too much master of his faculties to ignore me any longer,
+I walked quickly away and left him. I knew where he would be at six
+o’clock and had already engaged a table at the same restaurant. It was
+seven, however, before he put in an appearance, and by this time he
+was looking more composed. There was a reckless air about him, however,
+which was perhaps only noticeable to me; for none of the habitues of
+this especial restaurant were entirely without it; wild eyes and unkempt
+hair being in the majority.
+
+I let him eat. The dinner he ordered was simple and I had not the heart
+to interrupt his enjoyment of it.
+
+But when he had finished; and came to pay, then I allowed the shock to
+come. Under the bill which the waiter laid at the side of his plate
+was the inevitable steel coil; and it produced even more than its usual
+effect. I own I felt sorry for him.
+
+He did not dash from the place, however, as he had from the
+liquor-saloon. A spirit of resistance had seized him and he demanded to
+know where this object of his fear had come from. No one could tell him
+(or would). Whereupon he began to rave and would certainly have done
+himself or somebody else an injury if he had not been calmed by a man
+almost as wild-looking as himself. Paying his bill, but vowing he would
+never enter the place again, he went out, clay-white, but with the
+swaggering air of a man who had just asserted himself.
+
+He drooped, however, as soon as he reached the street, and I had no
+difficulty in following him to a certain gambling den where he gained
+three dollars and lost five. From there he went to his lodgings in West
+Tenth Street.
+
+I did not follow him in. He had passed through many deep and wearing
+emotions since noon, and I had not the heart to add another to them.
+
+But late the next day I returned to this house and rang the bell. It was
+already dusk, but there was light enough for me to notice the unrepaired
+condition of the iron railings on either side of the old stone stoop and
+to compare this abode of decayed grandeur with the spacious and elegant
+apartment in which pretty Mrs. Holmes mourned the loss of her young
+husband. Had any such comparison ever been made by the unhappy John
+Graham, as he hurried up these decayed steps into the dismal halls
+beyond?
+
+In answer to my summons there came to the door a young woman to whom I
+had but to intimate my wish to see Mr. Graham for her to let me in with
+the short announcement:
+
+“Top floor, back room! Door open, he’s out; door shut, he’s in.”
+
+As an open door meant liberty to enter, I lost no time in following the
+direction of her pointing finger, and presently found myself in a low
+attic chamber overlooking an acre of roofs. A fire had been lighted in
+the open grate, and the flickering red beams danced on ceiling and walls
+with a cheeriness greatly in contrast to the nature of the business
+which had led me there. As they also served to light the room I
+proceeded to make myself at home; and drawing up a chair, sat down at
+the fireplace in such a way as to conceal myself from any one entering
+the door.
+
+In less than half an hour he came in.
+
+He was in a state of high emotion. His face was flushed and his eyes
+burning. Stepping rapidly forward, he flung his hat on the table in the
+middle of the room, with a curse that was half cry and half groan. Then
+he stood silent and I had an opportunity of noting how haggard he had
+grown in the short time which had elapsed since I had seen him last. But
+the interval of his inaction was short, and in a moment he flung up
+his arms with a loud “Curse her!” that rang through the narrow room and
+betrayed the source of his present frenzy. Then he again stood still,
+grating his teeth and working his hands in a way terribly suggestive
+of the murderer’s instinct. But not for long. He saw something that
+attracted his attention on the table, a something upon which my eyes
+had long before been fixed, and starting forward with a fresh and quite
+different display of emotion, he caught up what looked like a roll of
+manuscript and began to tear it open.
+
+“Back again! Always back!” wailed from his lips; and he gave the roll a
+toss that sent from its midst a small object which he no sooner saw than
+he became speechless and reeled back. It was another of the steel coils.
+
+“Good God!” fell at last from his stiff and working lips. “Am I mad or
+has the devil joined in the pursuit against me? I cannot eat, I cannot
+drink, but this diabolical spring starts up before me. It is here,
+there, everywhere. The visible sign of my guilt; the--the----” He had
+stumbled back upon my chair, and turning, saw me.
+
+I was on my feet at once, and noting that he was dazed by the shock of
+my presence, I slid quietly between him and the door.
+
+The movement roused him. Turning upon me with a sarcastic smile in which
+was concentrated the bitterness of years, he briefly said:
+
+“So, I am caught! Well, there has to be an end to men as well as to
+things, and I am ready for mine. She turned me away from her door
+to-day, and after the hell of that moment I don’t much fear any other.”
+
+“You had better not talk,” I admonished him. “All that falls from you
+now will only tell against you on your trial.”
+
+He broke into a harsh laugh. “And do you think I care for that? That
+having been driven by a woman’s perfidy into crime I am going to bridle
+my tongue and keep down the words which are my only safeguard from
+insanity? No, no; while my miserable breath lasts I will curse her,
+and if the halter is to cut short my words, it shall be with her name
+blistering my lips.”
+
+I attempted to speak, but he would not give me the opportunity. The
+passion of weeks had found vent and he rushed on recklessly.
+
+“I went to her house to-day. I wanted to see her in her widow’s weeds;
+I wanted to see her eyes red with weeping over a grief which owed its
+bitterness to me. But she would not grant me an admittance. She had me
+thrust from her door, and I shall never know how deeply the iron has
+sunk into her soul. But--” and here his face showed a sudden change,
+“I shall see her if I am tried for murder. She will be in the
+court-room,--on the witness stand----”
+
+“Doubtless,” I interjected; but his interruption came quickly and with
+vehement passion.
+
+“Then I am ready. Welcome trial, conviction, death, even. To confront
+her eye to eye is all I wish. She shall never forget it, never!”
+
+“Then you do not deny----” I began.
+
+“I deny nothing,” he returned, and held out his hands with a grim
+gesture. “How can I, when there falls from everything I touch, the
+devilish thing which took away the life I hated?”
+
+“Have you anything more to say or do before you leave these rooms?” I
+asked.
+
+He shook his head, and then, bethinking himself, pointed to the roll of
+paper which he had flung on the table.
+
+“Burn that!” he cried.
+
+I took up the roll and looked at it. It was the manuscript of a poem in
+blank verse.
+
+“I have been with it into a dozen newspaper and magazine offices,” he
+explained with great bitterness. “Had I succeeded in getting a publisher
+for it I might have forgotten my wrongs and tried to build up a new life
+on the ruins of the old. But they would not have it, none of them, so I
+say, burn it! that no memory of me may remain in this miserable world.”
+
+“Keep to the facts!” I severely retorted. “It was while carrying this
+poem from one newspaper to another that you secured that bit of print
+upon the blank side of which you yourself printed the obituary notice
+with which you savored your revenge upon the woman who had disappointed
+you.”
+
+“You know that? Then you know where I got the poison with which I tipped
+the silly toy with which that weak man fooled away his life?”
+
+“No,” said I, “I do not know where you got it. I merely know it was no
+common poison bought at a druggist’s, or from any ordinary chemist.”
+
+“It was woorali; the deadly, secret woorali. I got it from--but that
+is another man’s secret. You will never hear from me anything that will
+compromise a friend. I got it, that is all. One drop, but it killed my
+man.”
+
+The satisfaction, the delight, which he threw into these words are
+beyond description. As they left his lips a jet of flame from the
+neglected fire shot up and threw his figure for one instant into bold
+relief upon the lowering ceiling; then it died out, and nothing but the
+twilight dusk remained in the room and on the countenance of this doomed
+and despairing man.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Difficult Problem, by
+Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      A Difficult Problem, by Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Difficult Problem, by
+Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Difficult Problem
+       1900
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2007 [EBook #22807]
+Last Updated: December 18, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DIFFICULT PROBLEM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      A DIFFICULT PROBLEM
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Copyright The F. M. Lupton Publishing Company. 1900
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_000a"> I. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> II. </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_000a" id="link2H_4_000a"></a> <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A LADY to see you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked up and was at once impressed by the grace and beauty of the
+      person thus introduced to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything I can do to serve you?&rdquo; I asked, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She cast me a child-like look full of trust and candor as she seated
+      herself in the chair I pointed out to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe so, I hope so,&rdquo; she earnestly assured me. &ldquo;I&mdash;I am in
+      great trouble. I have just lost my husband&mdash;but it is not that. It is
+      the slip of paper I found on my dresser, and which&mdash;which&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was trembling violently and her words were fast becoming incoherent. I
+      calmed her and asked her to relate her story just as it had happened; and
+      after a few minutes of silent struggle she succeeded in collecting herself
+      sufficiently to respond with some degree of connection and
+      self-possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been married six months. My name is Lucy Holmes. For the last few
+      weeks my husband and myself have been living in an apartment house on
+      Fifty-ninth Street, and as we had not a care in the world, we were very
+      happy till Mr. Holmes was called away on business to Philadelphia. This
+      was two weeks ago. Five days later I received an affectionate letter from
+      him, in which he promised to come back the next day; and the news so
+      delighted me that I accepted an invitation to the theater from some
+      intimate friends of ours. The next morning I naturally felt fatigued and
+      rose late; but I was very cheerful, for I expected my husband at noon. And
+      now comes the perplexing mystery. In the course of dressing myself I
+      stepped to my bureau, and seeing a small newspaper-slip attached to the
+      cushion by a pin, I drew it off and read it. It was a death notice, and my
+      hair rose and my limbs failed me as I took in its fatal and incredible
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Died this day at the Colonnade, James Forsythe De Witt Holmes. New York
+      papers please copy.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;James Forsythe De Witt Holmes was my husband, and his last letter, which
+      was at that very moment lying beside the cushion, had been dated from the
+      Colonnade. Was I dreaming or under the spell of some frightful
+      hallucination which led me to misread the name on the slip of paper before
+      me? I could not determine. My head, throat and chest seemed bound about
+      with iron, so that I could neither speak nor breathe with freedom, and,
+      suffering thus, I stood staring at this demoniacal bit of paper which in
+      an instant had brought the shadow of death upon my happy life. Nor was I
+      at all relieved when a little later I flew with the notice into a
+      neighbor&rsquo;s apartment, and praying her to read it for me, found that my
+      eyes had not deceived me and that the name was indeed my husband&rsquo;s and the
+      notice one of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not from my own mind but from hers came the first suggestion of comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;It cannot be your husband who is meant,&rsquo; said she; &lsquo;but some one of the
+      same name. Your husband wrote to you yesterday, and this person must have
+      been dead at least two days for the printed notice of his decease to have
+      reached New York. Some one has remarked the striking similarity of names,
+      and wishing to startle you, cut the slip out and pinned it on your
+      cushion.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly knew of no one inconsiderate enough to do this, but the
+      explanation was so plausible, I at once embraced it and sobbed aloud in my
+      relief. But in the midst of my rejoicing I heard the bell ring in my
+      apartment, and running thither, encountered a telegraph boy holding in his
+      outstretched hand the yellow envelope which so often bespeaks death or
+      disaster. The sight took my breath away. Summoning my maid, whom I saw
+      hastening towards me from an inner room, I begged her to open the telegram
+      for me. Sir, I saw in her face, before she had read the first line, a
+      confirmation of my very worst fears. My husband was&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young widow, choked with her emotions, paused, recovered herself for
+      the second time, and then went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had better show you the telegram.&rdquo; Taking it from her pocket-book, she
+      held it towards me. I read it at a glance. It was short, simple and
+      direct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come at once. Your husband found dead in his room this morning. Doctors
+      say heart disease. Please telegraph.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see it says this morning,&rdquo; she explained, placing her delicate finger
+      on the word she so eagerly quoted. &ldquo;That means a week ago Wednesday, the
+      same day on which the printed slip recording his death was found on my
+      cushion. Do you not see something very strange in this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did; but, before I ventured to express myself on this subject, I desired
+      her to tell me what she had learned in her visit to Philadelphia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her answer was simple and straightforward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But little more than you find in this telegram. He died in his room. He
+      was found lying on the floor near the bell button, which he had evidently
+      risen to touch. One hand was clenched on his chest, but his face wore a
+      peaceful look as if death had come too suddenly to cause him much
+      suffering. His bed was undisturbed; he had died before retiring, possibly
+      in the act of packing his trunk, for it was found nearly ready for the
+      expressman. Indeed, there was every evidence of his intention to leave on
+      an early morning train. He had even desired to be awakened at six o&rsquo;clock;
+      and it was his failure to respond to the summons of the bell-boy, which
+      led to so early a discovery of his death. He had never complained of any
+      distress in breathing, and we had always considered him a perfectly
+      healthy man; but there was no reason for assigning any other cause than
+      heart-failure to his sudden death, and so the burial certificate was made
+      out to that effect, and I was allowed to bring him home and bury him in
+      our vault at Wood-lawn. But&mdash;&rdquo; and here her earnestness dried up the
+      tears which had been flowing freely during this recital of her husband&rsquo;s
+      lonely death and sad burial,&mdash;&ldquo;do you not think an investigation
+      should be made into a death preceded by a false obituary notice? For I
+      found when I was in Philadelphia that no paragraph such as I had found
+      pinned to my cushion had been inserted in any paper there, nor had any
+      other man of the same name ever registered at the Colonnade, much less
+      died there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you this notice with you?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She immediately produced it, and while I was glancing it over remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some persons would give a superstitious explanation to the whole matter;
+      think I had received a supernatural warning and been satisfied with what
+      they would call a spiritual manifestation. But I have not a bit of such
+      folly in my composition. Living hands set up the type and printed the
+      words which gave me so deathly a shock; and hands, with a real purpose in
+      them, cut it from the paper and pinned it to my cushion for me to see when
+      I woke on that fatal morning. But whose hands? That is what I want you to
+      discover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had caught the fever of her suspicions long before this and now felt
+      justified in showing my interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First, let me ask,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;who has access to your rooms besides your
+      maid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one; absolutely no one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is innocence itself. She is no common housemaid, but a girl my mother
+      brought up, who for love of me consents to do such work in the household
+      as my simple needs require.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no objection to your doing so; but you will gain nothing by it.
+      I have already talked the subject over with her a dozen times and she is
+      as much puzzled by it as I am myself. She says she cannot see how any one
+      could have found an entrance to my room during my sleep, as the doors were
+      all locked. Yet, as she very naturally observes, some one must have done
+      so, for she was in my bedroom herself just before I returned from the
+      theater, and can swear, if necessary, that no such slip of paper was to be
+      seen on my cushion, at that time, for her duties led her directly to my
+      bureau and kept her there for full five minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you believed her?&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Implicitly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what direction, then, do your suspicions turn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! in no direction. That is the trouble. I don&rsquo;t know whom to
+      mistrust. It was because I was told that you had the credit of seeing
+      light where others can see nothing but darkness, that I have sought your
+      aid in this emergency. For the uncertainty surrounding this matter is
+      killing me and will make my sorrow quite unendurable if I cannot obtain
+      relief from it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not wonder,&rdquo; I began, struck by the note of truth in her tones. &ldquo;And
+      I shall certainly do what I can for you. But before we go any further, let
+      us examine this scrap of newspaper and see what we can make out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had already noted two or three points in connection with it, to which I
+      now proceeded to direct her attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you compared this notice,&rdquo; I pursued, &ldquo;with such others as you find
+      every day in the papers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; was her eager answer. &ldquo;Is it not like them all&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read,&rdquo; was my quiet interruption. &ldquo;&lsquo;On this day at the Colonnade&mdash;&rsquo;
+      On what day? The date is usually given in all the <i>bona-fide</i> notices
+      I have seen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; she asked, her eyes moist with un-shed tears, opening widely in
+      her astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look in the papers on your return home and see. Then the print. Observe
+      that the type is identical on both sides of this make-believe clipping,
+      while in fact there is always a perceptible difference between that used
+      in the obituary column and that to be found in the columns devoted to
+      other matter. Notice also,&rdquo; I continued, holding up the scrap of paper
+      between her and the light, &ldquo;that the alignment on one side is not exactly
+      parallel with that on the other; a discrepancy which would not exist if
+      both sides had been printed on a newspaper press. These facts lead me to
+      conclude, first, that the effort to match the type exactly was the mistake
+      of a man who tries to do too much; and secondly, that one of the sides at
+      least, presumably that containing the obituary notice, was printed on a
+      hand-press, on the blank side of a piece of galley proof picked up in some
+      newspaper office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see.&rdquo; And stretching out her hand with the utmost eagerness, she
+      took the slip and turned it over. Instantly a change took place in her
+      countenance. She sank back in her seat and a blush of manifest confusion
+      suffused her cheeks. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;what will you think of me! I
+      brought this scrap of print into the house <i>myself</i> and it was <i>I</i>
+      who pinned it on the cushion with my own hands! I remember it now. The
+      sight of those words recalls the whole occurrence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there is one mystery less for us to solve,&rdquo; I remarked, somewhat
+      dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so,&rdquo; she protested, with a deprecatory look. &ldquo;For me the
+      mystery deepens, and becomes every minute more serious. It is true that I
+      brought this scrap of newspaper into the house, and that it had, then as
+      now, the notice of my husband&rsquo;s death upon it, but the time of my bringing
+      it in was Tuesday night, and he was not found dead till Wednesday
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A discrepancy worth noting,&rdquo; I remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Involving a mystery of some importance,&rdquo; she concluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I agreed to that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And since we have discovered how the slip came into your room, we can now
+      proceed to the clearing up of this mystery,&rdquo; I observed. &ldquo;You can, of
+      course, inform me where you procured this clipping which you say you
+      brought into the house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You may think it strange, but when I alighted from the carriage that
+      night, a man on the sidewalk put this tiny scrap of paper into my hand. It
+      was done so mechanically that it made no more impression on my mind than
+      the thrusting of an advertisement upon me. Indeed, I supposed it was an
+      advertisement, and I only wonder that I retained it in my hand at all. But
+      that I did do so, and that, in a moment of abstraction I went so far as to
+      pin it to my cushion, is evident from the fact that a vague memory remains
+      in my mind of having read this recipe which you see printed on the reverse
+      side of the paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the recipe, then, and not the obituary notice which attracted your
+      attention the night before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Probably, but in pinning it to the cushion, it was the obituary notice
+      that chanced to come uppermost. Oh, why should I not have remembered this
+      till now! Can you understand my forgetting a matter of so much
+      importance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I allowed, after a momentary consideration of her ingenuous
+      countenance. &ldquo;The words you read in the morning were so startling that
+      they disconnected themselves from those you had carelessly glanced at the
+      night before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is it,&rdquo; she replied; &ldquo;and since then I have had eyes for the one
+      side only. How could I think of the other? But who could have printed this
+      thing and who was the man who put it into my hand? He looked like a beggar
+      but&mdash;Oh!&rdquo; she suddenly exclaimed, her cheeks flushing scarlet and her
+      eyes flashing with a feverish, almost alarming, glitter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it now?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;Another recollection?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; She spoke so low I could hardly hear her. &ldquo;He coughed and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what?&rdquo; I encouragingly suggested, seeing that she was under some new
+      and overwhelming emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That cough had a familiar sound, now that I think of it. It was like that
+      of a friend who&mdash;But no, no; I will not wrong him by any false
+      surmises. He would stoop to much, but not to that; yet&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The flush on her cheeks had died away, but the two vivid spots which
+      remained showed the depth of her excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; she suddenly asked, &ldquo;that a man out of revenge might plan
+      to frighten me by a false notice of my husband&rsquo;s death, and that God to
+      punish him, made the notice a prophecy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think a man influenced by the spirit of revenge might do almost
+      anything,&rdquo; I answered, purposely ignoring the latter part of her question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I always considered him a good man. At least I never looked upon him
+      as a wicked one. Every other beggar we meet has a cough; and yet,&rdquo; she
+      added after a moment&rsquo;s pause, &ldquo;if it was not he who gave me this mortal
+      shock, who was it? He is the only person in the world I ever wronged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had you not better tell me his name?&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am in too great doubt. I should hate to do him a second injury.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot injure him if he is innocent. My methods are very safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could forget his cough! but it had that peculiar catch in it that I
+      remembered so well in the cough of John Graham. I did not pay any especial
+      heed to it at the time. Old days and old troubles were far enough from my
+      thoughts; but now that my suspicions are raised, that low, choking sound
+      comes back to me in a strangely persistent way, and I seem to see a
+      well-remembered form in the stooping figure of this beggar. Oh, I hope the
+      good God will forgive me if I attribute to this disappointed man a
+      wickedness he never committed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is John Graham?&rdquo; I urged, &ldquo;and what was the nature of the wrong you
+      did him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose, cast me one appealing glance, and perceiving that I meant to
+      have her whole story, turned towards the fire and stood warming her feet
+      before the hearth, with her face turned away from my gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was once engaged to marry him,&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;Not because I loved him,
+      but because we were very poor&mdash;I mean my mother and myself&mdash;and
+      he had a home and seemed both good and generous. The day came when we were
+      to be married&mdash;this was in the West, way out in Kansas&mdash;and I
+      was even dressed for the wedding, when a letter came from my uncle here, a
+      rich uncle, very rich, who had never had anything to do with my mother
+      since her marriage, and in it he promised me fortune and everything else
+      desirable in life if I would come to him, unencumbered by any foolish
+      ties. Think of it! And I within half an hour of marriage with a man I had
+      never loved and now suddenly hated. The temptation was overwhelming, and
+      heartless as my conduct may appear to you, I succumbed to it. Telling my
+      lover that I had changed my mind, I dismissed the minister when he came,
+      and announced my intention of proceeding East as soon as possible. Mr.
+      Graham was simply paralyzed by his disappointment, and during the few days
+      which intervened before my departure, I was haunted by his face, which was
+      like that of a man who had died from some overwhelming shock. But when I
+      was once free of the town, especially after I arrived in New York, I
+      forgot alike his misery and himself. Everything I saw was so beautiful!
+      Life was so full of charm, and my uncle so delighted with me and
+      everything I did! Then there was James Holmes, and after I had seen him&mdash;But
+      I cannot talk of that. We loved each other, and under the surprise of this
+      new delight how could I be expected to remember the man I had left behind
+      me in that barren region in which I had spent my youth? But he did not
+      forget the misery I had caused him. He followed me to New York: and on the
+      morning I was married found his way into the house, and mixing with the
+      wedding guests, suddenly appeared before me just as I was receiving the
+      congratulations of my friends. At sight of him I experienced all the
+      terror he had calculated upon causing, but remembering at whose side I
+      stood, I managed to hide my confusion under an aspect of apparent
+      haughtiness. This irritated John Graham. Flushing with anger, and ignoring
+      my imploring look, he cried peremptorily, &lsquo;Present me to your husband!&rsquo;
+      and I felt forced to present him. But his name produced no effect upon Mr.
+      Holmes. I had never told him of my early experience with this man, and
+      John Graham, perceiving this, cast me a bitter glance of disdain and
+      passed on, muttering between his teeth, &lsquo;False to me and false to him!
+      Your punishment be upon you!&rsquo; and I felt as if I had been cursed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped here, moved by emotions readily to be understood. Then with
+      quick impetuosity she caught up the thread of her story and went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was six months ago; and again I forgot. My mother died and my
+      husband soon absorbed my every thought. How could I dream that this man,
+      who was little more than a memory to me and scarcely that, was secretly
+      planning mischief against me? Yet this scrap about which we have talked so
+      much may have been the work of his hands; and even my husband&rsquo;s death&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not finish, but her face, which was turned towards me, spoke
+      volumes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your husband&rsquo;s death shall be inquired into,&rdquo; I assured her. And she,
+      exhausted by the excitement of her discoveries, asked that she might be
+      excused from further discussion of the subject at that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I had no wish, myself, to enter any more fully into the matter just
+      then, I readily acceded to her request, and the pretty widow left me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Obviously the first fact to be settled was whether Mr. Holmes had died
+      from purely natural causes. I accordingly busied myself the next few days
+      with this question, and was fortunate enough to so interest the proper
+      authorities that an order was issued for the exhumation and examination of
+      the body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result was disappointing. No traces of poison were to be, found in the
+      stomach nor was there to be seen on the body any mark of violence, with
+      the exception of a minute prick upon one of his thumbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This speck was so small that it escaped every eye but my own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The authorities assuring the widow that the doctor&rsquo;s certificate given her
+      in Philadelphia was correct, he was again interred. But I was not
+      satisfied; neither do I think she was. I was confident that his death was
+      not a natural one, and entered upon one of those secret and prolonged
+      investigations which have constituted the pleasure of my life for so many
+      years. First, I visited the Colonnade in Philadelphia, and being allowed
+      to see the room in which Mr. Holmes died, went through it carefully. As it
+      had not been used since that time I had some hopes of coming upon a clue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was a vain hope and the only result of my journey to this place was
+      the assurance I received that the gentleman had spent the entire evening
+      preceding his death, in his own room, where he had been brought several
+      letters and one small package, the latter coming by mail. With this one
+      point gained&mdash;if it was a point&mdash;I went back to New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Calling on Mrs. Holmes, I asked her if, while her husband was away she had
+      sent him anything besides letters, and upon her replying to the contrary,
+      requested to know if in her visit to Philadelphia she had noted among her
+      husband&rsquo;s effects anything that was new or unfamiliar to her, &ldquo;For he
+      received a package while there,&rdquo; I explained, &ldquo;and though its contents may
+      have been perfectly harmless, it is just as well for us to be assured of
+      this, before going any further.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you think, then, he was really the victim of some secret violence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have no proof of it,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;On the contrary, we are assured that he
+      died from natural causes. But the incident of the newspaper slip
+      outweighs, in my mind, the doctor&rsquo;s conclusions, and until the mystery
+      surrounding that obituary notice has been satisfactorily explained by its
+      author, I shall hold to the theory that your husband has been made away
+      with in some strange and seemingly unaccountable manner, which it is our
+      duty to bring to light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right! You are right! Oh, John Graham!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was so carried away by this plain expression of my belief that she
+      forgot the question I had put to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not told whether or not you found anything among your husband&rsquo;s
+      effects that can explain this mystery,&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She at once became attentive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; said she: &ldquo;his trunks were already packed and his bag nearly
+      so. There were a few things lying about the room which were put into the
+      latter, but I saw nothing but what was familiar to me among them; at
+      least, I think not; perhaps we had better look through his trunk and see.
+      I have not had the heart to open it since I came back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As this was exactly what I wished, I said as much, and she led me into a
+      small room, against the wall of which stood a trunk with a traveling-bag
+      on top of it. Opening the latter, she spread the contents out on the
+      trunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know all these things,&rdquo; she sadly murmured, the tears welling in her
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This?&rdquo; I inquired, lifting up a bit of coiled wire with two or three
+      little rings dangling from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; why, what is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks like a puzzle of some kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is of no consequence. My husband was forever amusing himself over
+      some such contrivance. All his friends knew how well he liked these toys
+      and frequently sent them to him. This one evidently reached him in
+      Philadelphia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile I was eying the bit of wire curiously. It was undoubtedly a
+      puzzle, but it had appendages to it that I did not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is more than ordinarily complicated,&rdquo; I observed, moving the rings up
+      and down in a vain endeavor to work them off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The better he would like it,&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I kept on working with the rings. Suddenly I gave a painful start. A
+      little prong in the handle of the toy had started out and pricked me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better not handle it,&rdquo; said I, and laid it down. But the next
+      minute I took it up again and put it in my pocket. The prick made by this
+      treacherous bit of mechanism was in or near the same place on my thumb as
+      the one I had noticed on the hand of the deceased Mr. Holmes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a fire in the room, and before proceeding further, I cauterized
+      that prick with the end of a red-hot poker. Then I made my adieux to Mrs.
+      Holmes and went immediately to a chemist friend of mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Test the end of this bit of steel for me,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;I have reason to
+      believe it carries with it a deadly poison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the toy, promised to subject it to every test possible and let me
+      know the result. Then I went home. I felt ill, or imagined that I did,
+      which under the circumstances was almost as bad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day, however, I was quite well, with the exception of a certain
+      inconvenience in my thumb. But not till the following week did I receive
+      the chemist&rsquo;s report. It overthrew my whole theory. He had found nothing,
+      and returned me the bit of steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was not convinced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will hunt up this John Graham,&rdquo; thought I, &ldquo;and study him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was not so easy a task as it may appear. As Mrs. Holmes possessed
+      no clue to the whereabouts of her quondam lover, I had nothing to aid me
+      in my search for him, save her rather vague description of his personal
+      appearance and the fact that he was constantly interrupted in speaking by
+      a low, choking cough. However, my natural perseverance carried me through.
+      After seeing and interviewing a dozen John Grahams without result, I at
+      last lit upon a man of that name who presented a figure of such vivid
+      unrest and showed such desperate hatred of his fellows, that I began to
+      entertain hopes of his being the person I was in search of. But determined
+      to be sure of this before proceeding further, I confided my suspicions to
+      Mrs. Holmes, and induced her to accompany me down to a certain spot on the
+      &ldquo;Elevated&rdquo; from which I had more than once seen this man go by to his
+      usual lounging place in Printing-house Square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She showed great courage in doing this, for she had such a dread of him
+      that she was in a state of nervous excitement from the moment she left her
+      house, feeling sure that she would attract his attention and thus risk a
+      disagreeable encounter. But she might have spared herself these fears. He
+      did not even glance up in passing us, and it was mainly by his walk she
+      recognized him. But she did recognize him; and this nerved me at once to
+      set about the formidable task of fixing upon him a crime which was not
+      even admitted as a fact by the authorities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a man-about-town, living, to all appearance, by his wits. He was to
+      be seen mostly in the downtown portions of the city, standing for hours in
+      front of some newspaper office, gnawing at his finger-ends, and staring at
+      the passers-by with a hungry look that alarmed the timid and provoked alms
+      from the benevolent. Needless to say that he rejected the latter
+      expression of sympathy, with angry contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face was long and pallid, his cheek-bones high and his mouth bitter
+      and resolute in expression. He wore neither beard nor mustache, but made
+      up for their lack by an abundance of light brown hair, which hung very
+      nearly to his shoulders. He stooped in standing, but as soon as he moved,
+      showed decision and a certain sort of pride which caused him to hold his
+      head high and his body more than usually erect. With all these good points
+      his appearance was decidedly sinister, and I did not wonder that Mrs.
+      Holmes feared him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My next move was to accost him. Pausing before the doorway in which he
+      stood, I addressed him some trivial question. He answered me with
+      sufficient politeness, but with a grudging attention which betrayed the
+      hold which his own thoughts had upon him. He coughed while speaking and
+      his eye, which for a moment rested on mine, produced upon me an impression
+      for which I was hardly prepared, great as was my prejudice against him.
+      There was such an icy composure in it; the composure of an envenomed
+      nature conscious of its superiority to all surprise. As I lingered to
+      study him more closely, the many dangerous qualities of the man became
+      more and more apparent to me; and convinced that to proceed further
+      without deep and careful thought, would be to court failure where triumph
+      would set me up for life, I gave up all present attempt at enlisting him
+      in conversation, and went my way in an inquiring and serious mood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, my position was a peculiar one, and the problem I had set for
+      myself one of unusual difficulty. Only by means of some extraordinary
+      device such as is seldom resorted to by the police of this or any other
+      nation, could I hope to arrive at the secret of this man&rsquo;s conduct, and
+      triumph in a matter which to all appearance was beyond human penetration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what device? I knew of none, nor through two days and nights of
+      strenuous thought did I receive the least light on the subject. Indeed, my
+      mind seemed to grow more and more confused the more I urged it into
+      action. I failed to get inspiration indoors or out; and feeling my health
+      suffer from the constant irritation of my recurring disappointment, I
+      resolved to take a day off and carry myself and my perplexities into the
+      country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did so. Governed by an impulse which I did not then understand, I went
+      to a small town in New Jersey and entered the first house on which I saw
+      the sign &ldquo;Room to Let.&rdquo; The result was most fortunate. No sooner had I
+      crossed the threshold of the neat and homely apartment thrown open to my
+      use, than it recalled a room in which I had slept two years before and in
+      which I had read a little book I was only too glad to remember at this
+      moment. Indeed, it seemed as if a veritable inspiration had come to me
+      through this recollection, for though the tale to which I allude was a
+      simple child&rsquo;s story written for moral purposes, it contained an idea
+      which promised to be invaluable to me at this juncture. Indeed, by means
+      of it, I believed myself to have solved the problem that was puzzling me,
+      and relieved beyond expression, I paid for the night&rsquo;s lodging I had now
+      determined to forego, and returned immediately to New York, having spent
+      just fifteen minutes in the town where I had received this happy
+      inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My first step on entering the city was to order a dozen steel coils made
+      similar to the one which I still believed answerable for James Holmes&rsquo;
+      death. My next to learn as far as possible all of John Graham&rsquo;s haunts and
+      habits. At a week&rsquo;s end I had the springs and knew almost as well as he
+      did himself where he was likely to be found at all times of the day and
+      night. I immediately acted upon this knowledge. Assuming a slight
+      disguise, I repeated my former stroll through Printing-house Square,
+      looking into each doorway as I passed. John Graham was in one of them,
+      staring in his old way at the passing crowd, but evidently seeing nothing
+      but the images formed by his own disordered brain. A manuscript-roll stuck
+      out of his breast-pocket, and from the way his nervous fingers fumbled
+      with it, I began to understand the restless glitter of his eyes, which
+      were as full of wretchedness as any eyes I have ever seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Entering the doorway where he stood, I dropped at his feet one of the
+      small steel coils with which I was provided. He did not see it. Stopping
+      near him I directed his attention to it by saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, but did I not see something drop out of your hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He started, glanced at the seeming inoffensive toy at which I pointed, and
+      altered so suddenly and so vividly that it became instantly apparent that
+      the surprise I had planned for him was fully as keen and searching a one
+      as I had anticipated. Recoiling sharply, he gave me a quick look, then
+      glanced down again at his feet as if half expecting to find the object
+      vanished which had startled him. But, perceiving it still lying there, he
+      crushed it viciously with his heel, and uttering some incoherent words,
+      dashed impetuously from the building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Confident that he would regret this hasty impulse and return, I withdrew a
+      few steps and waited. And sure enough, in less than five minutes he came
+      slinking back. Picking up the coil with more than one sly look about, he
+      examined it closely. Suddenly he gave a sharp cry and went staggering out.
+      Had he discovered that the seeming puzzle possessed the same invisible
+      spring which had made the one handled by James Holmes so dangerous?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certain as to the place he would be found in next, I made a short cut to
+      an obscure little saloon in Nassau Street, where I took up my stand in a
+      spot convenient for seeing without being seen. In ten minutes he was
+      standing at the bar asking for a drink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whiskey!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;straight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was given him; but as he set the empty glass down on the counter, he
+      saw lying before him another of the steel springs, and was so confounded
+      by the sight that the proprietor, who had put it there at my instigation,
+      thrust out his hand toward him as if half afraid he would fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did that&mdash;that <i>thing</i> come from?&rdquo; stammered John Graham,
+      ignoring the other&rsquo;s gesture and pointing with a trembling hand at the
+      seemingly insignificant bit of wire between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t it drop from your coat-pocket?&rdquo; inquired the proprietor. &ldquo;It
+      wasn&rsquo;t lying here before you came in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a horrible oath the unhappy man turned and fled from the place. I
+      lost sight of him after that for three hours, then I suddenly came upon
+      him again. He was walking up town with a set purpose in his face that made
+      him look more dangerous than ever. Of course I followed him, expecting him
+      to turn towards Fifty-ninth Street, but at the corner of Madison Avenue
+      and Forty-seventh Street he changed his mind and dashed toward Third
+      Avenue. At Park Avenue he faltered and again turned north, walking for
+      several blocks as if the fiends were behind him. I began to think that he
+      was but attempting to walk off his excitement, when, at a sudden rushing
+      sound in the cut beside us, he stopped and trembled. An express train was
+      shooting by. As it disappeared in the tunnel beyond, he looked about him
+      with a blanched face and wandering eye; but his glance did not turn my
+      way, or if it did, he failed to attach any meaning to my near presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to move on again and this time towards the bridge spanning the
+      cut. I followed him very closely. In the center of it he paused and looked
+      down at the track beneath him. Another train was approaching. As it came
+      near he trembled from head to foot, and catching at the railing against
+      which he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a puff of
+      smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping with a
+      terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had taken the
+      form of a spiral and was sailing away before him in what to his disordered
+      imagination must have looked like a gigantic image of the coil with which
+      twice before on this day he had found himself confronted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may have been chance and it may have been providence; but whichever it
+      was it saved him. He could not face that semblance of his haunting
+      thought; and turning away he cowered down on the neighboring curbstone,
+      where he sat for several minutes, with his head buried in his hands; when
+      he rose again he was his own daring and sinister self. Knowing that he was
+      now too much master of his faculties to ignore me any longer, I walked
+      quickly away and left him. I knew where he would be at six o&rsquo;clock and had
+      already engaged a table at the same restaurant. It was seven, however,
+      before he put in an appearance, and by this time he was looking more
+      composed. There was a reckless air about him, however, which was perhaps
+      only noticeable to me; for none of the habitues of this especial
+      restaurant were entirely without it; wild eyes and unkempt hair being in
+      the majority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I let him eat. The dinner he ordered was simple and I had not the heart to
+      interrupt his enjoyment of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he had finished; and came to pay, then I allowed the shock to
+      come. Under the bill which the waiter laid at the side of his plate was
+      the inevitable steel coil; and it produced even more than its usual
+      effect. I own I felt sorry for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not dash from the place, however, as he had from the liquor-saloon.
+      A spirit of resistance had seized him and he demanded to know where this
+      object of his fear had come from. No one could tell him (or would).
+      Whereupon he began to rave and would certainly have done himself or
+      somebody else an injury if he had not been calmed by a man almost as
+      wild-looking as himself. Paying his bill, but vowing he would never enter
+      the place again, he went out, clay-white, but with the swaggering air of a
+      man who had just asserted himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drooped, however, as soon as he reached the street, and I had no
+      difficulty in following him to a certain gambling den where he gained
+      three dollars and lost five. From there he went to his lodgings in West
+      Tenth Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not follow him in. He had passed through many deep and wearing
+      emotions since noon, and I had not the heart to add another to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But late the next day I returned to this house and rang the bell. It was
+      already dusk, but there was light enough for me to notice the unrepaired
+      condition of the iron railings on either side of the old stone stoop and
+      to compare this abode of decayed grandeur with the spacious and elegant
+      apartment in which pretty Mrs. Holmes mourned the loss of her young
+      husband. Had any such comparison ever been made by the unhappy John
+      Graham, as he hurried up these decayed steps into the dismal halls beyond?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to my summons there came to the door a young woman to whom I had
+      but to intimate my wish to see Mr. Graham for her to let me in with the
+      short announcement:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Top floor, back room! Door open, he&rsquo;s out; door shut, he&rsquo;s in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As an open door meant liberty to enter, I lost no time in following the
+      direction of her pointing finger, and presently found myself in a low
+      attic chamber overlooking an acre of roofs. A fire had been lighted in the
+      open grate, and the flickering red beams danced on ceiling and walls with
+      a cheeriness greatly in contrast to the nature of the business which had
+      led me there. As they also served to light the room I proceeded to make
+      myself at home; and drawing up a chair, sat down at the fireplace in such
+      a way as to conceal myself from any one entering the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In less than half an hour he came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was in a state of high emotion. His face was flushed and his eyes
+      burning. Stepping rapidly forward, he flung his hat on the table in the
+      middle of the room, with a curse that was half cry and half groan. Then he
+      stood silent and I had an opportunity of noting how haggard he had grown
+      in the short time which had elapsed since I had seen him last. But the
+      interval of his inaction was short, and in a moment he flung up his arms
+      with a loud &ldquo;Curse her!&rdquo; that rang through the narrow room and betrayed
+      the source of his present frenzy. Then he again stood still, grating his
+      teeth and working his hands in a way terribly suggestive of the murderer&rsquo;s
+      instinct. But not for long. He saw something that attracted his attention
+      on the table, a something upon which my eyes had long before been fixed,
+      and starting forward with a fresh and quite different display of emotion,
+      he caught up what looked like a roll of manuscript and began to tear it
+      open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back again! Always back!&rdquo; wailed from his lips; and he gave the roll a
+      toss that sent from its midst a small object which he no sooner saw than
+      he became speechless and reeled back. It was another of the steel coils.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; fell at last from his stiff and working lips. &ldquo;Am I mad or has
+      the devil joined in the pursuit against me? I cannot eat, I cannot drink,
+      but this diabolical spring starts up before me. It is here, there,
+      everywhere. The visible sign of my guilt; the&mdash;the&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      had stumbled back upon my chair, and turning, saw me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was on my feet at once, and noting that he was dazed by the shock of my
+      presence, I slid quietly between him and the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The movement roused him. Turning upon me with a sarcastic smile in which
+      was concentrated the bitterness of years, he briefly said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So, I am caught! Well, there has to be an end to men as well as to
+      things, and I am ready for mine. She turned me away from her door to-day,
+      and after the hell of that moment I don&rsquo;t much fear any other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better not talk,&rdquo; I admonished him. &ldquo;All that falls from you now
+      will only tell against you on your trial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke into a harsh laugh. &ldquo;And do you think I care for that? That
+      having been driven by a woman&rsquo;s perfidy into crime I am going to bridle my
+      tongue and keep down the words which are my only safeguard from insanity?
+      No, no; while my miserable breath lasts I will curse her, and if the
+      halter is to cut short my words, it shall be with her name blistering my
+      lips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I attempted to speak, but he would not give me the opportunity. The
+      passion of weeks had found vent and he rushed on recklessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went to her house to-day. I wanted to see her in her widow&rsquo;s weeds; I
+      wanted to see her eyes red with weeping over a grief which owed its
+      bitterness to me. But she would not grant me an admittance. She had me
+      thrust from her door, and I shall never know how deeply the iron has sunk
+      into her soul. But&mdash;&rdquo; and here his face showed a sudden change, &ldquo;I
+      shall see her if I am tried for murder. She will be in the court-room,&mdash;on
+      the witness stand&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubtless,&rdquo; I interjected; but his interruption came quickly and with
+      vehement passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I am ready. Welcome trial, conviction, death, even. To confront her
+      eye to eye is all I wish. She shall never forget it, never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you do not deny&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; I began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I deny nothing,&rdquo; he returned, and held out his hands with a grim gesture.
+      &ldquo;How can I, when there falls from everything I touch, the devilish thing
+      which took away the life I hated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you anything more to say or do before you leave these rooms?&rdquo; I
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head, and then, bethinking himself, pointed to the roll of
+      paper which he had flung on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Burn that!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took up the roll and looked at it. It was the manuscript of a poem in
+      blank verse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been with it into a dozen newspaper and magazine offices,&rdquo; he
+      explained with great bitterness. &ldquo;Had I succeeded in getting a publisher
+      for it I might have forgotten my wrongs and tried to build up a new life
+      on the ruins of the old. But they would not have it, none of them, so I
+      say, burn it! that no memory of me may remain in this miserable world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep to the facts!&rdquo; I severely retorted. &ldquo;It was while carrying this poem
+      from one newspaper to another that you secured that bit of print upon the
+      blank side of which you yourself printed the obituary notice with which
+      you savored your revenge upon the woman who had disappointed you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know that? Then you know where I got the poison with which I tipped
+      the silly toy with which that weak man fooled away his life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I do not know where you got it. I merely know it was no
+      common poison bought at a druggist&rsquo;s, or from any ordinary chemist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was woorali; the deadly, secret woorali. I got it from&mdash;but that
+      is another man&rsquo;s secret. You will never hear from me anything that will
+      compromise a friend. I got it, that is all. One drop, but it killed my
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The satisfaction, the delight, which he threw into these words are beyond
+      description. As they left his lips a jet of flame from the neglected fire
+      shot up and threw his figure for one instant into bold relief upon the
+      lowering ceiling; then it died out, and nothing but the twilight dusk
+      remained in the room and on the countenance of this doomed and despairing
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Difficult Problem, by
+Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
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+
+
+Title: A Difficult Problem
+       1900
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2007 [EBook #22807]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DIFFICULT PROBLEM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+A DIFFICULT PROBLEM
+
+By Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+Copyright The F. M. Lupton Publishing Company. 1900
+
+
+
+"A LADY to see you, sir."
+
+I looked up and was at once impressed by the grace and beauty of the
+person thus introduced to me.
+
+"Is there anything I can do to serve you?" I asked, rising.
+
+She cast me a child-like look full of trust and candor as she seated
+herself in the chair I pointed out to her.
+
+"I believe so, I hope so," she earnestly assured me. "I--I am in great
+trouble. I have just lost my husband--but it is not that. It is the slip
+of paper I found on my dresser, and which--which----"
+
+She was trembling violently and her words were fast becoming incoherent.
+I calmed her and asked her to relate her story just as it had happened;
+and after a few minutes of silent struggle she succeeded in collecting
+herself sufficiently to respond with some degree of connection and
+self-possession.
+
+"I have been married six months. My name is Lucy Holmes. For the last
+few weeks my husband and myself have been living in an apartment house
+on Fifty-ninth Street, and as we had not a care in the world, we were
+very happy till Mr. Holmes was called away on business to Philadelphia.
+This was two weeks ago. Five days later I received an affectionate
+letter from him, in which he promised to come back the next day; and the
+news so delighted me that I accepted an invitation to the theater
+from some intimate friends of ours. The next morning I naturally felt
+fatigued and rose late; but I was very cheerful, for I expected my
+husband at noon. And now comes the perplexing mystery. In the course
+of dressing myself I stepped to my bureau, and seeing a small
+newspaper-slip attached to the cushion by a pin, I drew it off and read
+it. It was a death notice, and my hair rose and my limbs failed me as I
+took in its fatal and incredible words.
+
+"'Died this day at the Colonnade, James Forsythe De Witt Holmes. New
+York papers please copy.'
+
+"James Forsythe De Witt Holmes was my husband, and his last letter,
+which was at that very moment lying beside the cushion, had been dated
+from the Colonnade. Was I dreaming or under the spell of some frightful
+hallucination which led me to misread the name on the slip of paper
+before me? I could not determine. My head, throat and chest seemed bound
+about with iron, so that I could neither speak nor breathe with freedom,
+and, suffering thus, I stood staring at this demoniacal bit of paper
+which in an instant had brought the shadow of death upon my happy life.
+Nor was I at all relieved when a little later I flew with the notice
+into a neighbor's apartment, and praying her to read it for me, found
+that my eyes had not deceived me and that the name was indeed my
+husband's and the notice one of death.
+
+"Not from my own mind but from hers came the first suggestion of
+comfort.
+
+"'It cannot be your husband who is meant,' said she; 'but some one of
+the same name. Your husband wrote to you yesterday, and this person must
+have been dead at least two days for the printed notice of his decease
+to have reached New York. Some one has remarked the striking similarity
+of names, and wishing to startle you, cut the slip out and pinned it on
+your cushion.'
+
+"I certainly knew of no one inconsiderate enough to do this, but the
+explanation was so plausible, I at once embraced it and sobbed aloud in
+my relief. But in the midst of my rejoicing I heard the bell ring in my
+apartment, and running thither, encountered a telegraph boy holding in
+his outstretched hand the yellow envelope which so often bespeaks death
+or disaster. The sight took my breath away. Summoning my maid, whom I
+saw hastening towards me from an inner room, I begged her to open the
+telegram for me. Sir, I saw in her face, before she had read the first
+line, a confirmation of my very worst fears. My husband was----"
+
+The young widow, choked with her emotions, paused, recovered herself for
+the second time, and then went on.
+
+"I had better show you the telegram." Taking it from her pocket-book,
+she held it towards me. I read it at a glance. It was short, simple and
+direct.
+
+"Come at once. Your husband found dead in his room this morning. Doctors
+say heart disease. Please telegraph."
+
+"You see it says this morning," she explained, placing her delicate
+finger on the word she so eagerly quoted. "That means a week ago
+Wednesday, the same day on which the printed slip recording his death
+was found on my cushion. Do you not see something very strange in this?"
+
+I did; but, before I ventured to express myself on this subject,
+I desired her to tell me what she had learned in her visit to
+Philadelphia.
+
+Her answer was simple and straightforward.
+
+"But little more than you find in this telegram. He died in his room.
+He was found lying on the floor near the bell button, which he had
+evidently risen to touch. One hand was clenched on his chest, but his
+face wore a peaceful look as if death had come too suddenly to cause him
+much suffering. His bed was undisturbed; he had died before retiring,
+possibly in the act of packing his trunk, for it was found nearly ready
+for the expressman. Indeed, there was every evidence of his intention to
+leave on an early morning train. He had even desired to be awakened at
+six o'clock; and it was his failure to respond to the summons of the
+bell-boy, which led to so early a discovery of his death. He had never
+complained of any distress in breathing, and we had always considered
+him a perfectly healthy man; but there was no reason for assigning any
+other cause than heart-failure to his sudden death, and so the burial
+certificate was made out to that effect, and I was allowed to bring
+him home and bury him in our vault at Wood-lawn. But--" and here her
+earnestness dried up the tears which had been flowing freely during
+this recital of her husband's lonely death and sad burial,--"do you not
+think an investigation should be made into a death preceded by a
+false obituary notice? For I found when I was in Philadelphia that no
+paragraph such as I had found pinned to my cushion had been inserted in
+any paper there, nor had any other man of the same name ever registered
+at the Colonnade, much less died there."
+
+"Have you this notice with you?" I asked.
+
+She immediately produced it, and while I was glancing it over remarked:
+
+"Some persons would give a superstitious explanation to the whole
+matter; think I had received a supernatural warning and been satisfied
+with what they would call a spiritual manifestation. But I have not a
+bit of such folly in my composition. Living hands set up the type and
+printed the words which gave me so deathly a shock; and hands, with a
+real purpose in them, cut it from the paper and pinned it to my cushion
+for me to see when I woke on that fatal morning. But whose hands? That
+is what I want you to discover."
+
+I had caught the fever of her suspicions long before this and now felt
+justified in showing my interest.
+
+"First, let me ask," said I, "who has access to your rooms besides your
+maid?"
+
+"No one; absolutely no one."
+
+"And what of her?"
+
+"She is innocence itself. She is no common housemaid, but a girl my
+mother brought up, who for love of me consents to do such work in the
+household as my simple needs require."
+
+"I should like to see her."
+
+"There is no objection to your doing so; but you will gain nothing by
+it. I have already talked the subject over with her a dozen times and
+she is as much puzzled by it as I am myself. She says she cannot see how
+any one could have found an entrance to my room during my sleep, as the
+doors were all locked. Yet, as she very naturally observes, some one
+must have done so, for she was in my bedroom herself just before I
+returned from the theater, and can swear, if necessary, that no such
+slip of paper was to be seen on my cushion, at that time, for her duties
+led her directly to my bureau and kept her there for full five minutes."
+
+"And you believed her?" I suggested.
+
+"Implicitly."
+
+"In what direction, then, do your suspicions turn?"
+
+"Alas! in no direction. That is the trouble. I don't know whom to
+mistrust. It was because I was told that you had the credit of seeing
+light where others can see nothing but darkness, that I have sought your
+aid in this emergency. For the uncertainty surrounding this matter is
+killing me and will make my sorrow quite unendurable if I cannot obtain
+relief from it."
+
+"I do not wonder," I began, struck by the note of truth in her tones.
+"And I shall certainly do what I can for you. But before we go any
+further, let us examine this scrap of newspaper and see what we can make
+out of it."
+
+I had already noted two or three points in connection with it, to which
+I now proceeded to direct her attention.
+
+"Have you compared this notice," I pursued, "with such others as you
+find every day in the papers?"
+
+"No," was her eager answer. "Is it not like them all----"
+
+"Read," was my quiet interruption. "'On this day at the Colonnade--'
+On what day? The date is usually given in all the _bona-fide_ notices I
+have seen."
+
+"Is it?" she asked, her eyes moist with un-shed tears, opening widely in
+her astonishment.
+
+"Look in the papers on your return home and see. Then the print. Observe
+that the type is identical on both sides of this make-believe clipping,
+while in fact there is always a perceptible difference between that used
+in the obituary column and that to be found in the columns devoted to
+other matter. Notice also," I continued, holding up the scrap of paper
+between her and the light, "that the alignment on one side is not
+exactly parallel with that on the other; a discrepancy which would not
+exist if both sides had been printed on a newspaper press. These facts
+lead me to conclude, first, that the effort to match the type exactly
+was the mistake of a man who tries to do too much; and secondly, that
+one of the sides at least, presumably that containing the obituary
+notice, was printed on a hand-press, on the blank side of a piece of
+galley proof picked up in some newspaper office."
+
+"Let me see." And stretching out her hand with the utmost eagerness, she
+took the slip and turned it over. Instantly a change took place in her
+countenance. She sank back in her seat and a blush of manifest confusion
+suffused her cheeks. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "what will you think of me! I
+brought this scrap of print into the house _myself_ and it was _I_ who
+pinned it on the cushion with my own hands! I remember it now. The sight
+of those words recalls the whole occurrence."
+
+"Then there is one mystery less for us to solve," I remarked, somewhat
+dryly.
+
+"Do you think so," she protested, with a deprecatory look. "For me the
+mystery deepens, and becomes every minute more serious. It is true that
+I brought this scrap of newspaper into the house, and that it had, then
+as now, the notice of my husband's death upon it, but the time of
+my bringing it in was Tuesday night, and he was not found dead till
+Wednesday morning."
+
+"A discrepancy worth noting," I remarked.
+
+"Involving a mystery of some importance," she concluded.
+
+I agreed to that.
+
+"And since we have discovered how the slip came into your room, we can
+now proceed to the clearing up of this mystery," I observed. "You can,
+of course, inform me where you procured this clipping which you say you
+brought into the house?"
+
+"Yes. You may think it strange, but when I alighted from the carriage
+that night, a man on the sidewalk put this tiny scrap of paper into my
+hand. It was done so mechanically that it made no more impression on my
+mind than the thrusting of an advertisement upon me. Indeed, I supposed
+it was an advertisement, and I only wonder that I retained it in my hand
+at all. But that I did do so, and that, in a moment of abstraction I
+went so far as to pin it to my cushion, is evident from the fact that a
+vague memory remains in my mind of having read this recipe which you see
+printed on the reverse side of the paper."
+
+"It was the recipe, then, and not the obituary notice which attracted
+your attention the night before?"
+
+"Probably, but in pinning it to the cushion, it was the obituary notice
+that chanced to come uppermost. Oh, why should I not have remembered
+this till now! Can you understand my forgetting a matter of so much
+importance?"
+
+"Yes," I allowed, after a momentary consideration of her ingenuous
+countenance. "The words you read in the morning were so startling that
+they disconnected themselves from those you had carelessly glanced at
+the night before."
+
+"That is it," she replied; "and since then I have had eyes for the one
+side only. How could I think of the other? But who could have printed
+this thing and who was the man who put it into my hand? He looked like a
+beggar but--Oh!" she suddenly exclaimed, her cheeks flushing scarlet and
+her eyes flashing with a feverish, almost alarming, glitter.
+
+"What is it now?" I asked. "Another recollection?"
+
+"Yes." She spoke so low I could hardly hear her. "He coughed and----"
+
+"And what?" I encouragingly suggested, seeing that she was under some
+new and overwhelming emotion.
+
+"That cough had a familiar sound, now that I think of it. It was like
+that of a friend who--But no, no; I will not wrong him by any false
+surmises. He would stoop to much, but not to that; yet----"
+
+The flush on her cheeks had died away, but the two vivid spots which
+remained showed the depth of her excitement.
+
+"Do you think," she suddenly asked, "that a man out of revenge might
+plan to frighten me by a false notice of my husband's death, and that
+God to punish him, made the notice a prophecy?"
+
+"I think a man influenced by the spirit of revenge might do almost
+anything," I answered, purposely ignoring the latter part of her
+question.
+
+"But I always considered him a good man. At least I never looked upon
+him as a wicked one. Every other beggar we meet has a cough; and yet,"
+she added after a moment's pause, "if it was not he who gave me this
+mortal shock, who was it? He is the only person in the world I ever
+wronged."
+
+"Had you not better tell me his name?" I suggested.
+
+"No, I am in too great doubt. I should hate to do him a second injury."
+
+"You cannot injure him if he is innocent. My methods are very safe."
+
+"If I could forget his cough! but it had that peculiar catch in it that
+I remembered so well in the cough of John Graham. I did not pay any
+especial heed to it at the time. Old days and old troubles were far
+enough from my thoughts; but now that my suspicions are raised, that
+low, choking sound comes back to me in a strangely persistent way, and
+I seem to see a well-remembered form in the stooping figure of this
+beggar. Oh, I hope the good God will forgive me if I attribute to this
+disappointed man a wickedness he never committed."
+
+"Who is John Graham?" I urged, "and what was the nature of the wrong you
+did him?"
+
+She rose, cast me one appealing glance, and perceiving that I meant to
+have her whole story, turned towards the fire and stood warming her feet
+before the hearth, with her face turned away from my gaze.
+
+"I was once engaged to marry him," she began. "Not because I loved him,
+but because we were very poor--I mean my mother and myself--and he had a
+home and seemed both good and generous. The day came when we were to be
+married--this was in the West, way out in Kansas--and I was even dressed
+for the wedding, when a letter came from my uncle here, a rich uncle,
+very rich, who had never had anything to do with my mother since her
+marriage, and in it he promised me fortune and everything else desirable
+in life if I would come to him, unencumbered by any foolish ties. Think
+of it! And I within half an hour of marriage with a man I had never
+loved and now suddenly hated. The temptation was overwhelming, and
+heartless as my conduct may appear to you, I succumbed to it. Telling my
+lover that I had changed my mind, I dismissed the minister when he came,
+and announced my intention of proceeding East as soon as possible. Mr.
+Graham was simply paralyzed by his disappointment, and during the few
+days which intervened before my departure, I was haunted by his face,
+which was like that of a man who had died from some overwhelming shock.
+But when I was once free of the town, especially after I arrived in New
+York, I forgot alike his misery and himself. Everything I saw was so
+beautiful! Life was so full of charm, and my uncle so delighted with me
+and everything I did! Then there was James Holmes, and after I had
+seen him--But I cannot talk of that. We loved each other, and under the
+surprise of this new delight how could I be expected to remember the
+man I had left behind me in that barren region in which I had spent my
+youth? But he did not forget the misery I had caused him. He followed
+me to New York: and on the morning I was married found his way into the
+house, and mixing with the wedding guests, suddenly appeared before me
+just as I was receiving the congratulations of my friends. At sight of
+him I experienced all the terror he had calculated upon causing, but
+remembering at whose side I stood, I managed to hide my confusion under
+an aspect of apparent haughtiness. This irritated John Graham. Flushing
+with anger, and ignoring my imploring look, he cried peremptorily,
+'Present me to your husband!' and I felt forced to present him. But
+his name produced no effect upon Mr. Holmes. I had never told him of my
+early experience with this man, and John Graham, perceiving this, cast
+me a bitter glance of disdain and passed on, muttering between his
+teeth, 'False to me and false to him! Your punishment be upon you!' and
+I felt as if I had been cursed."
+
+She stopped here, moved by emotions readily to be understood. Then with
+quick impetuosity she caught up the thread of her story and went on.
+
+"That was six months ago; and again I forgot. My mother died and my
+husband soon absorbed my every thought. How could I dream that this man,
+who was little more than a memory to me and scarcely that, was secretly
+planning mischief against me? Yet this scrap about which we have talked
+so much may have been the work of his hands; and even my husband's
+death----"
+
+She did not finish, but her face, which was turned towards me, spoke
+volumes.
+
+"Your husband's death shall be inquired into," I assured her. And she,
+exhausted by the excitement of her discoveries, asked that she might be
+excused from further discussion of the subject at that time.
+
+As I had no wish, myself, to enter any more fully into the matter just
+then, I readily acceded to her request, and the pretty widow left me.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Obviously the first fact to be settled was whether Mr. Holmes had died
+from purely natural causes. I accordingly busied myself the next few
+days with this question, and was fortunate enough to so interest the
+proper authorities that an order was issued for the exhumation and
+examination of the body.
+
+The result was disappointing. No traces of poison were to be, found in
+the stomach nor was there to be seen on the body any mark of violence,
+with the exception of a minute prick upon one of his thumbs.
+
+This speck was so small that it escaped every eye but my own.
+
+The authorities assuring the widow that the doctor's certificate given
+her in Philadelphia was correct, he was again interred. But I was not
+satisfied; neither do I think she was. I was confident that his
+death was not a natural one, and entered upon one of those secret and
+prolonged investigations which have constituted the pleasure of my life
+for so many years. First, I visited the Colonnade in Philadelphia, and
+being allowed to see the room in which Mr. Holmes died, went through it
+carefully. As it had not been used since that time I had some hopes of
+coming upon a clue.
+
+But it was a vain hope and the only result of my journey to this place
+was the assurance I received that the gentleman had spent the entire
+evening preceding his death, in his own room, where he had been brought
+several letters and one small package, the latter coming by mail. With
+this one point gained--if it was a point--I went back to New York.
+
+Calling on Mrs. Holmes, I asked her if, while her husband was away she
+had sent him anything besides letters, and upon her replying to the
+contrary, requested to know if in her visit to Philadelphia she had
+noted among her husband's effects anything that was new or unfamiliar to
+her, "For he received a package while there," I explained, "and though
+its contents may have been perfectly harmless, it is just as well for us
+to be assured of this, before going any further."
+
+"Oh, you think, then, he was really the victim of some secret violence."
+
+"We have no proof of it," I said. "On the contrary, we are assured that
+he died from natural causes. But the incident of the newspaper slip
+outweighs, in my mind, the doctor's conclusions, and until the mystery
+surrounding that obituary notice has been satisfactorily explained by
+its author, I shall hold to the theory that your husband has been made
+away with in some strange and seemingly unaccountable manner, which it
+is our duty to bring to light."
+
+"You are right! You are right! Oh, John Graham!"
+
+She was so carried away by this plain expression of my belief that she
+forgot the question I had put to her.
+
+"You have not told whether or not you found anything among your
+husband's effects that can explain this mystery," I suggested.
+
+She at once became attentive.
+
+"Nothing," said she: "his trunks were already packed and his bag nearly
+so. There were a few things lying about the room which were put into
+the latter, but I saw nothing but what was familiar to me among them;
+at least, I think not; perhaps we had better look through his trunk and
+see. I have not had the heart to open it since I came back."
+
+As this was exactly what I wished, I said as much, and she led me into a
+small room, against the wall of which stood a trunk with a traveling-bag
+on top of it. Opening the latter, she spread the contents out on the
+trunk.
+
+"I know all these things," she sadly murmured, the tears welling in her
+eyes.
+
+"This?" I inquired, lifting up a bit of coiled wire with two or three
+little rings dangling from it.
+
+"No; why, what is that?"
+
+"It looks like a puzzle of some kind."
+
+"Then it is of no consequence. My husband was forever amusing himself
+over some such contrivance. All his friends knew how well he liked these
+toys and frequently sent them to him. This one evidently reached him in
+Philadelphia."
+
+Meanwhile I was eying the bit of wire curiously. It was undoubtedly a
+puzzle, but it had appendages to it that I did not understand.
+
+"It is more than ordinarily complicated," I observed, moving the rings
+up and down in a vain endeavor to work them off.
+
+"The better he would like it," said she.
+
+I kept on working with the rings. Suddenly I gave a painful start. A
+little prong in the handle of the toy had started out and pricked me.
+
+"You had better not handle it," said I, and laid it down. But the next
+minute I took it up again and put it in my pocket. The prick made by
+this treacherous bit of mechanism was in or near the same place on my
+thumb as the one I had noticed on the hand of the deceased Mr. Holmes.
+
+There was a fire in the room, and before proceeding further, I
+cauterized that prick with the end of a red-hot poker. Then I made my
+adieux to Mrs. Holmes and went immediately to a chemist friend of mine.
+
+"Test the end of this bit of steel for me," said I. "I have reason to
+believe it carries with it a deadly poison."
+
+He took the toy, promised to subject it to every test possible and let
+me know the result. Then I went home. I felt ill, or imagined that I
+did, which under the circumstances was almost as bad.
+
+Next day, however, I was quite well, with the exception of a certain
+inconvenience in my thumb. But not till the following week did I
+receive the chemist's report. It overthrew my whole theory. He had found
+nothing, and returned me the bit of steel.
+
+But I was not convinced.
+
+"I will hunt up this John Graham," thought I, "and study him."
+
+But this was not so easy a task as it may appear. As Mrs. Holmes
+possessed no clue to the whereabouts of her quondam lover, I had nothing
+to aid me in my search for him, save her rather vague description of his
+personal appearance and the fact that he was constantly interrupted
+in speaking by a low, choking cough. However, my natural perseverance
+carried me through. After seeing and interviewing a dozen John Grahams
+without result, I at last lit upon a man of that name who presented
+a figure of such vivid unrest and showed such desperate hatred of his
+fellows, that I began to entertain hopes of his being the person I
+was in search of. But determined to be sure of this before proceeding
+further, I confided my suspicions to Mrs. Holmes, and induced her to
+accompany me down to a certain spot on the "Elevated" from which I
+had more than once seen this man go by to his usual lounging place in
+Printing-house Square.
+
+She showed great courage in doing this, for she had such a dread of him
+that she was in a state of nervous excitement from the moment she left
+her house, feeling sure that she would attract his attention and thus
+risk a disagreeable encounter. But she might have spared herself these
+fears. He did not even glance up in passing us, and it was mainly by his
+walk she recognized him. But she did recognize him; and this nerved
+me at once to set about the formidable task of fixing upon him a crime
+which was not even admitted as a fact by the authorities.
+
+He was a man-about-town, living, to all appearance, by his wits. He was
+to be seen mostly in the downtown portions of the city, standing for
+hours in front of some newspaper office, gnawing at his finger-ends, and
+staring at the passers-by with a hungry look that alarmed the timid and
+provoked alms from the benevolent. Needless to say that he rejected the
+latter expression of sympathy, with angry contempt.
+
+His face was long and pallid, his cheek-bones high and his mouth bitter
+and resolute in expression. He wore neither beard nor mustache, but made
+up for their lack by an abundance of light brown hair, which hung very
+nearly to his shoulders. He stooped in standing, but as soon as he
+moved, showed decision and a certain sort of pride which caused him to
+hold his head high and his body more than usually erect. With all these
+good points his appearance was decidedly sinister, and I did not wonder
+that Mrs. Holmes feared him.
+
+My next move was to accost him. Pausing before the doorway in which
+he stood, I addressed him some trivial question. He answered me with
+sufficient politeness, but with a grudging attention which betrayed the
+hold which his own thoughts had upon him. He coughed while speaking
+and his eye, which for a moment rested on mine, produced upon me an
+impression for which I was hardly prepared, great as was my prejudice
+against him. There was such an icy composure in it; the composure of
+an envenomed nature conscious of its superiority to all surprise. As I
+lingered to study him more closely, the many dangerous qualities of the
+man became more and more apparent to me; and convinced that to proceed
+further without deep and careful thought, would be to court failure
+where triumph would set me up for life, I gave up all present attempt
+at enlisting him in conversation, and went my way in an inquiring and
+serious mood.
+
+In fact, my position was a peculiar one, and the problem I had set for
+myself one of unusual difficulty. Only by means of some extraordinary
+device such as is seldom resorted to by the police of this or any other
+nation, could I hope to arrive at the secret of this man's conduct,
+and triumph in a matter which to all appearance was beyond human
+penetration.
+
+But what device? I knew of none, nor through two days and nights of
+strenuous thought did I receive the least light on the subject. Indeed,
+my mind seemed to grow more and more confused the more I urged it into
+action. I failed to get inspiration indoors or out; and feeling
+my health suffer from the constant irritation of my recurring
+disappointment, I resolved to take a day off and carry myself and my
+perplexities into the country.
+
+I did so. Governed by an impulse which I did not then understand, I went
+to a small town in New Jersey and entered the first house on which I saw
+the sign "Room to Let." The result was most fortunate. No sooner had I
+crossed the threshold of the neat and homely apartment thrown open to my
+use, than it recalled a room in which I had slept two years before and
+in which I had read a little book I was only too glad to remember at
+this moment. Indeed, it seemed as if a veritable inspiration had come to
+me through this recollection, for though the tale to which I allude was
+a simple child's story written for moral purposes, it contained an idea
+which promised to be invaluable to me at this juncture. Indeed, by means
+of it, I believed myself to have solved the problem that was puzzling
+me, and relieved beyond expression, I paid for the night's lodging
+I had now determined to forego, and returned immediately to New York,
+having spent just fifteen minutes in the town where I had received this
+happy inspiration.
+
+My first step on entering the city was to order a dozen steel coils made
+similar to the one which I still believed answerable for James Holmes'
+death. My next to learn as far as possible all of John Graham's haunts
+and habits. At a week's end I had the springs and knew almost as well as
+he did himself where he was likely to be found at all times of the day
+and night. I immediately acted upon this knowledge. Assuming a slight
+disguise, I repeated my former stroll through Printing-house Square,
+looking into each doorway as I passed. John Graham was in one of them,
+staring in his old way at the passing crowd, but evidently seeing
+nothing but the images formed by his own disordered brain. A
+manuscript-roll stuck out of his breast-pocket, and from the way his
+nervous fingers fumbled with it, I began to understand the restless
+glitter of his eyes, which were as full of wretchedness as any eyes I
+have ever seen.
+
+Entering the doorway where he stood, I dropped at his feet one of the
+small steel coils with which I was provided. He did not see it. Stopping
+near him I directed his attention to it by saying:
+
+"Pardon me, but did I not see something drop out of your hand?"
+
+He started, glanced at the seeming inoffensive toy at which I pointed,
+and altered so suddenly and so vividly that it became instantly apparent
+that the surprise I had planned for him was fully as keen and searching
+a one as I had anticipated. Recoiling sharply, he gave me a quick look,
+then glanced down again at his feet as if half expecting to find the
+object vanished which had startled him. But, perceiving it still
+lying there, he crushed it viciously with his heel, and uttering some
+incoherent words, dashed impetuously from the building.
+
+Confident that he would regret this hasty impulse and return, I withdrew
+a few steps and waited. And sure enough, in less than five minutes he
+came slinking back. Picking up the coil with more than one sly look
+about, he examined it closely. Suddenly he gave a sharp cry and went
+staggering out. Had he discovered that the seeming puzzle possessed the
+same invisible spring which had made the one handled by James Holmes so
+dangerous?
+
+Certain as to the place he would be found in next, I made a short cut to
+an obscure little saloon in Nassau Street, where I took up my stand in
+a spot convenient for seeing without being seen. In ten minutes he was
+standing at the bar asking for a drink.
+
+"Whiskey!" he cried, "straight."
+
+It was given him; but as he set the empty glass down on the counter, he
+saw lying before him another of the steel springs, and was so
+confounded by the sight that the proprietor, who had put it there at my
+instigation, thrust out his hand toward him as if half afraid he would
+fall.
+
+"Where did that--that _thing_ come from?" stammered John Graham,
+ignoring the other's gesture and pointing with a trembling hand at the
+seemingly insignificant bit of wire between them.
+
+"Didn't it drop from your coat-pocket?" inquired the proprietor. "It
+wasn't lying here before you came in."
+
+With a horrible oath the unhappy man turned and fled from the place. I
+lost sight of him after that for three hours, then I suddenly came upon
+him again. He was walking up town with a set purpose in his face that
+made him look more dangerous than ever. Of course I followed him,
+expecting him to turn towards Fifty-ninth Street, but at the corner of
+Madison Avenue and Forty-seventh Street he changed his mind and dashed
+toward Third Avenue. At Park Avenue he faltered and again turned north,
+walking for several blocks as if the fiends were behind him. I began to
+think that he was but attempting to walk off his excitement, when, at a
+sudden rushing sound in the cut beside us, he stopped and trembled. An
+express train was shooting by. As it disappeared in the tunnel beyond,
+he looked about him with a blanched face and wandering eye; but his
+glance did not turn my way, or if it did, he failed to attach any
+meaning to my near presence.
+
+He began to move on again and this time towards the bridge spanning
+the cut. I followed him very closely. In the center of it he paused and
+looked down at the track beneath him. Another train was approaching. As
+it came near he trembled from head to foot, and catching at the railing
+against which he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a
+puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping
+with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had
+taken the form of a spiral and was sailing away before him in what to
+his disordered imagination must have looked like a gigantic image of
+the coil with which twice before on this day he had found himself
+confronted.
+
+It may have been chance and it may have been providence; but whichever
+it was it saved him. He could not face that semblance of his haunting
+thought; and turning away he cowered down on the neighboring curbstone,
+where he sat for several minutes, with his head buried in his hands;
+when he rose again he was his own daring and sinister self. Knowing that
+he was now too much master of his faculties to ignore me any longer,
+I walked quickly away and left him. I knew where he would be at six
+o'clock and had already engaged a table at the same restaurant. It was
+seven, however, before he put in an appearance, and by this time he
+was looking more composed. There was a reckless air about him, however,
+which was perhaps only noticeable to me; for none of the habitues of
+this especial restaurant were entirely without it; wild eyes and unkempt
+hair being in the majority.
+
+I let him eat. The dinner he ordered was simple and I had not the heart
+to interrupt his enjoyment of it.
+
+But when he had finished; and came to pay, then I allowed the shock to
+come. Under the bill which the waiter laid at the side of his plate
+was the inevitable steel coil; and it produced even more than its usual
+effect. I own I felt sorry for him.
+
+He did not dash from the place, however, as he had from the
+liquor-saloon. A spirit of resistance had seized him and he demanded to
+know where this object of his fear had come from. No one could tell him
+(or would). Whereupon he began to rave and would certainly have done
+himself or somebody else an injury if he had not been calmed by a man
+almost as wild-looking as himself. Paying his bill, but vowing he would
+never enter the place again, he went out, clay-white, but with the
+swaggering air of a man who had just asserted himself.
+
+He drooped, however, as soon as he reached the street, and I had no
+difficulty in following him to a certain gambling den where he gained
+three dollars and lost five. From there he went to his lodgings in West
+Tenth Street.
+
+I did not follow him in. He had passed through many deep and wearing
+emotions since noon, and I had not the heart to add another to them.
+
+But late the next day I returned to this house and rang the bell. It was
+already dusk, but there was light enough for me to notice the unrepaired
+condition of the iron railings on either side of the old stone stoop and
+to compare this abode of decayed grandeur with the spacious and elegant
+apartment in which pretty Mrs. Holmes mourned the loss of her young
+husband. Had any such comparison ever been made by the unhappy John
+Graham, as he hurried up these decayed steps into the dismal halls
+beyond?
+
+In answer to my summons there came to the door a young woman to whom I
+had but to intimate my wish to see Mr. Graham for her to let me in with
+the short announcement:
+
+"Top floor, back room! Door open, he's out; door shut, he's in."
+
+As an open door meant liberty to enter, I lost no time in following the
+direction of her pointing finger, and presently found myself in a low
+attic chamber overlooking an acre of roofs. A fire had been lighted in
+the open grate, and the flickering red beams danced on ceiling and walls
+with a cheeriness greatly in contrast to the nature of the business
+which had led me there. As they also served to light the room I
+proceeded to make myself at home; and drawing up a chair, sat down at
+the fireplace in such a way as to conceal myself from any one entering
+the door.
+
+In less than half an hour he came in.
+
+He was in a state of high emotion. His face was flushed and his eyes
+burning. Stepping rapidly forward, he flung his hat on the table in the
+middle of the room, with a curse that was half cry and half groan. Then
+he stood silent and I had an opportunity of noting how haggard he had
+grown in the short time which had elapsed since I had seen him last. But
+the interval of his inaction was short, and in a moment he flung up
+his arms with a loud "Curse her!" that rang through the narrow room and
+betrayed the source of his present frenzy. Then he again stood still,
+grating his teeth and working his hands in a way terribly suggestive
+of the murderer's instinct. But not for long. He saw something that
+attracted his attention on the table, a something upon which my eyes
+had long before been fixed, and starting forward with a fresh and quite
+different display of emotion, he caught up what looked like a roll of
+manuscript and began to tear it open.
+
+"Back again! Always back!" wailed from his lips; and he gave the roll a
+toss that sent from its midst a small object which he no sooner saw than
+he became speechless and reeled back. It was another of the steel coils.
+
+"Good God!" fell at last from his stiff and working lips. "Am I mad or
+has the devil joined in the pursuit against me? I cannot eat, I cannot
+drink, but this diabolical spring starts up before me. It is here,
+there, everywhere. The visible sign of my guilt; the--the----" He had
+stumbled back upon my chair, and turning, saw me.
+
+I was on my feet at once, and noting that he was dazed by the shock of
+my presence, I slid quietly between him and the door.
+
+The movement roused him. Turning upon me with a sarcastic smile in which
+was concentrated the bitterness of years, he briefly said:
+
+"So, I am caught! Well, there has to be an end to men as well as to
+things, and I am ready for mine. She turned me away from her door
+to-day, and after the hell of that moment I don't much fear any other."
+
+"You had better not talk," I admonished him. "All that falls from you
+now will only tell against you on your trial."
+
+He broke into a harsh laugh. "And do you think I care for that? That
+having been driven by a woman's perfidy into crime I am going to bridle
+my tongue and keep down the words which are my only safeguard from
+insanity? No, no; while my miserable breath lasts I will curse her,
+and if the halter is to cut short my words, it shall be with her name
+blistering my lips."
+
+I attempted to speak, but he would not give me the opportunity. The
+passion of weeks had found vent and he rushed on recklessly.
+
+"I went to her house to-day. I wanted to see her in her widow's weeds;
+I wanted to see her eyes red with weeping over a grief which owed its
+bitterness to me. But she would not grant me an admittance. She had me
+thrust from her door, and I shall never know how deeply the iron has
+sunk into her soul. But--" and here his face showed a sudden change,
+"I shall see her if I am tried for murder. She will be in the
+court-room,--on the witness stand----"
+
+"Doubtless," I interjected; but his interruption came quickly and with
+vehement passion.
+
+"Then I am ready. Welcome trial, conviction, death, even. To confront
+her eye to eye is all I wish. She shall never forget it, never!"
+
+"Then you do not deny----" I began.
+
+"I deny nothing," he returned, and held out his hands with a grim
+gesture. "How can I, when there falls from everything I touch, the
+devilish thing which took away the life I hated?"
+
+"Have you anything more to say or do before you leave these rooms?" I
+asked.
+
+He shook his head, and then, bethinking himself, pointed to the roll of
+paper which he had flung on the table.
+
+"Burn that!" he cried.
+
+I took up the roll and looked at it. It was the manuscript of a poem in
+blank verse.
+
+"I have been with it into a dozen newspaper and magazine offices," he
+explained with great bitterness. "Had I succeeded in getting a publisher
+for it I might have forgotten my wrongs and tried to build up a new life
+on the ruins of the old. But they would not have it, none of them, so I
+say, burn it! that no memory of me may remain in this miserable world."
+
+"Keep to the facts!" I severely retorted. "It was while carrying this
+poem from one newspaper to another that you secured that bit of print
+upon the blank side of which you yourself printed the obituary notice
+with which you savored your revenge upon the woman who had disappointed
+you."
+
+"You know that? Then you know where I got the poison with which I tipped
+the silly toy with which that weak man fooled away his life?"
+
+"No," said I, "I do not know where you got it. I merely know it was no
+common poison bought at a druggist's, or from any ordinary chemist."
+
+"It was woorali; the deadly, secret woorali. I got it from--but that
+is another man's secret. You will never hear from me anything that will
+compromise a friend. I got it, that is all. One drop, but it killed my
+man."
+
+The satisfaction, the delight, which he threw into these words are
+beyond description. As they left his lips a jet of flame from the
+neglected fire shot up and threw his figure for one instant into bold
+relief upon the lowering ceiling; then it died out, and nothing but the
+twilight dusk remained in the room and on the countenance of this doomed
+and despairing man.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Difficult Problem, by
+Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
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