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OR a moment I thought that Godfrey was joking. How could that tangle of haphazard clippings tell any story? And if they did, how could it be connected with the one which we were trying to decipher? Then, at a second glance, I saw how in deadly earnest he was. There could be no doubting it; he had read into them some meaning which I had failed utterly to see.

I sat down in my chair again, my nerves a-quiver; at last, we were on the verge of success. “Well, let’s hear it,” I said.

“I intend that you shall—wait till I get them arranged. I’ll build up the story as I go along, and I want you to ask any questions or point out any defects that occur to you. Of course, it will be only a study in probabilities; but between us, I think we can get it pretty straight.”

He got up from the desk with the clippings in a neat little pile, and sat down in the chair facing mine. He took a meditative puff or two before he began.

“We’ll have to start with a few general observations,” he said, at last. “It’s evident that Thompson wouldn’t have carried these clippings around with him for so long unless they in some way concerned him. It’s evident that Miss Croydon would never have dared to