My brother's wife has taken a deep interest in the
Zane murder, and being at home all day, her resort is this room, where
she can see, unobserved, the whole _menage_ and movement in the block
opposite."
"Why did she feel so much interested?"
"Honor bright!" Calvin wrote. "Well, Mrs. Knox was a great admirer of
the late William Zane. They were very intimate--some thought under
engagement to marry. Suddenly she accepted my brother, and old Zane
turned out to be infatuated with his ward. We may call it rivalry and
reminiscence."
"Jer-i-choo-wo!"
Duff Salter, now full of smiles, proffered a pinch of snuff to his host,
who declined it, but set out a bottle of brandy in reciprocal
friendship.
"Go on," indicated Salter to the tablets.
"One morning, just before daybreak, my brother's wife, glancing out of
this window--"
"In this room, you say, before daybreak?"
Calvin looked viciously at Duff Salter, who merely smiled.
"She saw," said Calvin Van de Lear, "an object come out of the trap-door
on Zane's old residence and move under shelter of the ridge of the roof
to the newly-tenanted dwelling in the same block, and there disappear
down the similar trap."
"Jericho! Jericho!--Proceed."
"It was our inference that probably Andrew Zane was making stealthy
visits to Agnes, and we applied a test to her.
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