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DELL did not pause until he reached the first floor once more; then entering the library he locked the door and sank into a chair before the stand upon which stood the telephone. The shock of his discovery, overwhelming in its utter unexpectedness, made his brain reel; and he could almost doubt the evidence of his own eyes in the first moment of stupefaction. Then a host of small incidents crowded in confirmation to his mind. They had seemed trivial and irrelevant when they occurred; but in the light of the revelation which had just come to him he could have cursed himself for his blindness. He had looked only for the obvious, it was true; yet the solution of the problem had been so obvious from the very first that he had failed to attach any significance to it.

Yet even now his work was not done. The thought brought him tor his feet and set him to pacing the floor as if bodily action was necessary to relieve his teeming brain. Despite his knowledge, his absolute conviction of the truth, the case was far from finished; for the culprit could not be brought to account merely on the strength of that which he had just witnessed.

He had not an iota of proof to support any accusation he might make, and the circumstantial evidence which he 284