having a policeman cross our sacred portals? They are quite as respectable as murderers, though scarcely as efficient. Now, if I were the next on the list of our domestic Dionysius and the sword were suspended over my head, I should reach up and snap the hair. I can afford to laugh."
"Not you! Rannie, my darling, never you!"
The sharp cry was almost a wail, but it held such a wealth of infinite love and devotion that the listening detective could hardly credit the fact that it was the quiet, self-contained, little Miss Meade who uttered it. That it was ungratefully received was evident from the indistinct but churlish grumble which followed; and then there was silence.
Odell continued on his way upstairs with a new fact to add to the family data with which the attorney had supplied him. The cripple was evidently his aunt's favorite; the spinster had taken to her heart the one maimed member of the family in preference to all the rest.
When he reached the third floor Odell was conscious of an acrid odor on the air, which seemed to come from the rear on the left, the room which Lome had told him was occupied by Gene. He bent and looked quickly through the keyhole, but the turned key obstructed his view. The smoky, acrid odor was stronger now. Gene had lost no time after encountering the detective in locking himself in his room and burning certain papers.
It was natural, perhaps, that the young man should have private letters which he would not care to have seen by the prying eyes of a stranger; yet coupling his discovery with Titheredge's statement of the previous association with the
