All young ladies carry them." For answer the officer on guard thrust his hand into one of his capacious pockets, and drawing out a neat little bag of knitted beads, passed it over to the detective with the laconic remark: "Nothing doing." And so it proved.

It held only a pocket handkerchief--embroidered but without a monogram--and a memorandum-book without an entry.
"A blind alley, if ever there was one," muttered Mr.Gryce; and ordering the policeman to replace the bag as nearly as possible on the spot from which it had been taken, he proceeded with the Curator to Room B.
Prepared to encounter a woman of disordered mind, the appearance presented by Mrs.Taylor at his entrance greatly astonished Mr.Gryce.
There was a calmness in her attitude which one would scarcely expect to see in a woman whom mania had just driven into crime.

Surely lunacy does not show such self-restraint; nor does lunacy awaken any such feelings of awe as followed a prolonged scrutiny of her set but determined features.
Only grief of the most intense and sacred character could account for the aspect she presented, and as the man to whom the tragedies of life were of daily occurrence took in this mystery with all its incongruities, he realized, not without a sense of professional pleasure, no doubt, that he had before him an affair calling for the old-time judgment which, for forty or more years, had made his record famous in the police annals of the metropolis.
She was seated with no one near her but a young lady whom sympathetic interest had drawn to her side.

Mr.Roberts stood in one of the windows, and not far from him a man in the museum uniform.
At the authoritative advance of the old detective, the woman, whose eye he had caught, attempted to struggle to her feet, but desisted after a moment of hopeless effort, and sank back in her chair.

There was no pretense in this.