THE CASE OF THE LAMP THAT WENT OUT

by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner



CHAPTER I

THE DISCOVERY


The radiance of a clear September morning lay over Vienna. The
air was so pure that the sky shone in brightest azure even where
the city's buildings clustered thickest. On the outskirts of the
town the rays of the awakening sun danced in crystalline ether
and struck answering gleams from the dew on grass and shrub in
the myriad gardens of the suburban streets.

It was still very early. The old-fashioned steeple clock on the
church of the Holy Virgin in Hietzing had boomed out six slow
strokes but a short time back. Anna, the pretty blonde girl who
carried out the milk for the dwellers in several streets of this
aristocratic residential suburb, was just coming around the corner
of the main street into a quiet lane. This lane could hardly be
dignified by the name of street as yet, it was so very quiet. It
had been opened and named scarcely a year back and it was bordered