Page:Chipperfield--Unseen Hands.djvu/81

Rh "See any difference in the color?" Odell persisted. "Don't you know that everything that is inflammable and of a different texture or substance leaves a different ash behind? Those pale, gray, satiny flakes are from the paper which you burned; these coarser, slightly darker ones are from something else. What did you burn here this morning or last night, Mr. Chalmers?"

"Nothing! I swear it!" Gene cried huskily. "For God's sake, Sergeant, tell me what you are driving at! When I started to burn the letters it seems to me that I did notice some other ashes there in the grate, but I paid no attention to them."

"You detected no odor as of smoke In your room?"

"None. I haven't been long out of it to-day anyway; I was awakened by Dad's fall and stayed with him only until you arrived. If anything had been burned here I surely would have smelt the smoke when I came up to destroy the letters."

"Mr. Chalmers, when was the last time you had a fire in this grate?" Odell looked up in time to catch the younger man's swift change of expression.

"I—I can't remember," Gene stammered. "Sometime in the early spring, I imagine."

"I do not mean a coal fire, but papers, trash, anything; when was the last time before this morning that something was burned here?"

"I couldn't tell you, Sergeant. It's a habit of mine to burn old letters and such things there instead of having the maid take them downstairs. She always cleans it out whenever she finds any ashes there."