fine and delicate, calm and orderly, but later on it was irregular
and uncertain, as if penned by a trembling hand under stress of
terror. This change came in the leaves of the book which followed
the strange and terrible title, "How I was murdered."

Before Muller began to read he felt the covers of the book carefully.
In one of them there was a tiny pocket, in which he found a little
piece of wall paper of a noticeable and distinctly ugly pattern.
The paper had a dark blue ground with clumsy lines of gold on it.
In the pocket he found also a tramway ticket, which had been crushed
and then carefully smoothed out again. After looking at these
papers, Muller replaced them in the cover of the notebook. The book
itself was strongly perfumed with the same odour which had exhaled
from the handkerchief.

The detective did not begin his reading in that part of the book
which followed the mysterious title, as the commissioner had done.
He began instead at the very first words.

"Ah! she is still young," he murmured, when he had read the first
lines. "Young, in easy circumstances, happy and contented."

These first pages told of pleasure trips, of visits from and to good
friends, of many little events of every-day life. Then came some
accounts, written in pencil, of shopping expeditions to the city.
Costly laces and jewels had been bought, and linen garments for
children by the dozen. "She is rich, generous, and charitable,"
thought the detective, for the book showed that the considerable
sums which had been spent here had not been for the writer herself.
The laces bore the mark, "For our church"; behind the account for