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186 went through Miss Meade's room yesterday morning and the one her sister used to occupy, but found nothing suspicious in either of them, of course. He won't have an opportunity to get into Lorne's room for some time to come, and the younger son, the hunchback, is still sick; but I left Taylor on the job on the chance that you would turn up to-day and might need him. The outside men report nothing doing."

"And Kelly?" The detective, in mentally gathering up the loose threads of his investigation at the point where his abduction had interrupted it, recalled the fourth man, to whom he had assigned the task of searching for the tools with which the picture-wire had been severed and the top step of the stairs sawed through. "Hasn't he sent in any report yet?"

"Only these." The chief swung about in his chair and took from the floor, where they had rested against the wall unnoticed by Odell, a long, heavy steel saw and a file with an electric attachment. "Are they the tools you were after?"

The detective reached forward and examined them eagerly.

"Good work!" he exclaimed. "Where did Kelly find them?"

"In the last place he would have thought to search for them; the open tool chest in the cellar. He says he passed them up a dozen times that first day; looked straight at them and never even saw them! It took a cool head, that, to leave them out in plain view on the chance that they wouldn't be noticed among the other tools."

"The obscurity of the obvious!" Odell smiled slyly. "Remember what I said to you the other day about the