Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/293

Rh floor, all new, all marked in the same way. Then this—Halloo! look here!" he suddenly cried.

Going over to where he stood I stooped down, when a wash-bowl half full of burned paper met my eye.

"I saw her bending over something in this corner, and could not think what it was. Can it be she is a suicide after all? She has evidently destroyed something here which she did n’t wish any one to see."

"I do not know," I said. "I could almost hope so."

"Not a scrap, not a morsel left to show what it was; how unfortunate!"

"Mrs. Belden must solve this riddle," I cried.

"Mrs. Belden must solve the whole riddle," he replied; "the secret of the Leavenworth murder hangs upon it." Then, with a lingering look towards the mass of burned paper, "Who knows but what that was a confession?"

The conjecture seemed only too probable.

"Whatever it was," said I, "it is now ashes, and we have got to accept the fact and make the best of it."

"Yes," said he with a deep sigh; "that’s so; but Mr. Gryce will never forgive me for it, never. He will say I ought to have known it was a suspicious circumstance for her to take a dose of medicine at the very moment detection stood at her back."

"But she did not know that; she did not see you."

"We don’t know what she saw, nor what Mrs. Belden saw. Women are a mystery; and though I flatter myself that ordinarily I am a match for the keenest bit of female flesh that ever walked, I must say that in this case I feel myself thoroughly and shamefully worsted."

"Well, well," I said, "the end has not come yet;