Jane answered nothing directly. She only held out her coarse red
hand and asked me, with a face growing pale as she spoke:

"Where's that picture of the murder?"

I produced it from my box, trembling inwardly all over.

Jane darted one finger demonstratively at a point in the photograph.

"Whose hand is THAT?" she asked with a strange earnestness, putting
her nail on the murderer's.

The words escaped me in a cry of horror almost before I was aware of
them:

"Aunt Emma's!" I said, gasping. "I NEVER noticed it before."

Then I drew back and stared at it in speechless awe and
consternation.

It was quite, quite true. No use in denying it. The figure that
escaped through the window was dressed in man's clothes, to be sure,
and as far as one could judge from the foreshortening and the
peculiar stoop, had a man's form and stature. But the hand was a
woman's--soft, and white, and delicate: nay more, the hand, as I
said in my haste, was line for line Aunt Emma's.

In a moment a terrible sinking came over me from head to foot. I
trembled like an aspen-leaf. Could this, then, be the meaning of Dr.
Marten's warning, that I should let sleeping dogs lie, lest I should