Page:Lawrence Lynch--The last stroke.djvu/131

Rh way across the town perhaps. How long must it have taken her, Doc, to go and come, in haste?"

"Quite half an hour, I should think."

"Well, we will assure ourselves of that later. Now we will suppose that this strange boy was acquainted with these rooms to some extent, and that he was, I fully believe. When Mrs. Fry is out of sight—and we know, from her story, that he was careful that she should be before he left his station upon the front porch—he slips indoors and evidently knows where to look for a lamp, which he does not light until he is inside this room." And Ferrars put a finger upon the match remarked upon by Mrs. Fry. "Now, as Mrs. Fry observed, there has been quite a film of dust in the air for the past twenty-four hours, so that, in spite of the good woman's tidy ways, it has accumulated upon this dark and shining wood." And he put down his finger and called their attention to its prints upon the table at his side.

"When we entered this room," he went on, "and I took it upon myself to look at that window with the swinging blind, under pretence of opening the shutters, I first noted that the visitor had left us a clue to his identity—several clues, indeed. Before seeing these I had thought that the boy was only an advance guard for some one else, but I see I was wrong. It was the