The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(343)

                “Not mine.”

                “Yet it was published this summer,” I remarked.

                They stared at me astonished, and Isabella caught up the book. It was one of those summer publications intended mainly for railroad distribution, and while neither ragged nor soiled, bore evidence of having been read.

                “Let me take it,” said I.

                Isabella at once passed it into my hands.

                “Does your brother smoke?” I asked.

                “Which brother?”

                “Either of them.”

                “Franklin sometimes, but Howard, never. It disagrees with him, I believe.”

                “There is a faint odor of tobacco about these pages. Can it have been brought here by Franklin?”

                “O no, he never reads novels, not such novels as this, at all events. He loses a lot of pleasure, we think.”



                             I turned the pages over. The latter ones were so fresh I could almost put my finger on the spot where the reader had left off. Feeling like a bloodhound who has just run upon a trail, I returned the book to Caroline, with the injunction to put it away; adding, as I saw her air of hesitation: “If your brother Franklin misses it, it will show that he brought it here, and then I shall have no further interest in it.” Which seemed to satisfy her, for she put it away at once on a high shelf.

                Perceiving nothing else in these rooms of a suggestive character, I led the way into the hall. There I had a new idea.

                “Which of you was the first to go through the rooms upstairs?” I inquired.

                “Both of us,” answered Isabella. “We came together. Why do you ask, Miss Butterworth?”

                “I was wondering if you found everything in order there?”

                “We did not notice anything wrong, did we, Caroline? Do you think that the—the person who committed that awful crime went upstairs? I couldn’t sleep a wink if I thought so.”

                “Nor I,” Caroline put in. “O, don’t say that he went upstairs, Miss Butterworth!”

                “I do not know it,” I rejoined.

                “But you asked—”

                “And I ask again. Wasn’t there some little thing out of its usual place? I was up in your front chamber after water for a minute, but I didn’t touch anything but the mug.”

                “We missed the mug, but—O Caroline, the pin-cushion! Do you suppose Miss Butterworth means the pin-cushion?”

                I started. Did she refer to the one I had picked up from the floor and placed on a side-table?

                “What about the pin-cushion?” I asked.

                “O nothing, but we did not know what to make of its being on the table. You see, we had a little pin-cushion shaped like a tomato which always hung at the side of our bureau. It was tied to one of the brackets and was never taken off; Caroline having a fancy for it because it kept her favorite black pins out of the reach of the neighbor’s children when they came here. Well, this cushion, this sacred cushion which none of us dared touch, was found by us on a little table by the door, with the ribbon hanging from it by which it had been tied to the bureau. Some one had pulled it off, and very roughly too, for the ribbon was all ragged and torn. But there is nothing in a little thing like that to interest you, is there, Miss Butterworth?”