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Rh The self-invited guest met his first surprise on the table. It was littered with two or three newspapers. The date of the uppermost caught his eye. It was a copy of the "Post" of the twenty-fifth. He looked at the other papers. One was the "Times" and another the "News," dated respectively the twenty-fourth and the twenty-sixth. There was an "Express" of the twenty-eighth. Each contained long accounts of the developments in the Cunningham murder mystery.

How did these papers come here? The apartment was closed, its tenant in Chicago. The only other persons who had a key and the right of entry were Horikawa and the Paradox janitor, and the house servant had fled to parts unknown. Who, then, had brought these papers here? And why? Some one, Lane guessed, who was vitally interested in the murder. He based his presumption on one circum- stance. The sections of the newspapers which made no reference to the Cunningham affair had been jammed into the waste-paper basket close to an adjoining desk.

The apartment held two rooms, a buffet kitchen and a bathroom. Kirby opened the door into the bedroom.

He stood paralyzed on the threshold. On the bed, fully dressed, his legs stretched in front of him and his feet crossed, was the missing man Horikawa.