young matron, was as flippant as the best of them.

One evening, when the men were sitting late in the smoking-room, the talk
turned on the now half-forgotten drama in which the hapless Adelaide
Melhuish played her last rôle.

"I met Peters in the Savage Club the other night," said Hart, filling the
negro-head pipe with care while he talked, "and he was chortling about
his 'psychological study,' as he called it, of that unfortunate chemist.
He still clings to the theory that your wife was the intended victim,
Grant. Do you agree with him?"

"Rubbish!" cried Furneaux, before his host could answer. "At best, Peters
is only a clever ass. Siddle never had the remotest notion of killing
Miss Doris Martin, as Mrs. Grant was then. We shall never know for
certain just what happened, but there are elements in the affair which
give ground for reasonable guesswork. The first thing that impressed
Winter and me--at least, I suppose I really evolved the idea, though my
bulky friend elaborated it" (whereat Winter smiled forgivingly, and
beheaded a fresh Havana) "was the complete noiselessness of the crime.
Here we had Mr. Grant startled by the face at the window, and actually
searching outside the house for the ghostly visitant, while Miss Doris
was gazing at The Hollies from the other side of the river, and not a
sound was heard, though it was a summer's night, without a breath of
wind, and at an hour when the splash of a fish leaping in the stream
would have created a commotion. Now, Miss Melhuish was an active and
well-built young woman, an actress, too, and therefore likely to meet an
emergency without instant collapse. Yet she allows herself to be struck
dead or insensible without cry or struggle! How do you account for it?"