"This is my room," wrote Calvin. "I stay here all day when I study or enjoy myself. The governor doesn't come in here to give me any advice or nose around."
"Is Mrs. Knox Van de Lear serious as to religious matters?"
"Very," wrote Calvin, sententiously, and looked at Duff Salter with the most open countenance he had ever been seen to show. Duff merely asked another question:
"Has she a good handwriting? I want to have a small document very neatly written."
Calvin went over to a trunk, unlocked it, and took out a bundle of what appeared to be lady's letters, and selecting one, folded the address back and showed the chirography.
"Jericho! Jerry-cho! cho! O cho!" sneezed Duff Salter. "The most admirable writing I have ever seen."
"I have been in receipt of some sundry sums of money from you, Salter, to follow up this Zane mystery. I hope to be able to show you to-night that it has not been misinvested."
"You have had two hundred dollars," wrote Duff Salter. "What are your conclusions?"
"In the block opposite are several houses belonging to the Zane estate. One of them stood empty until within a month, when a tenant unknown to the neighborhood, with small furniture and effects--evidently a mere servant--moved in. My brother's wife has taken a deep interest in the Zane murder, and being at home all day, her resort is this room, where she can see, unobserved, the whole _menage_ and movement in the block opposite."
"Honor bright!" Calvin wrote. "Well, Mrs. Knox was a great admirer of the late William Zane. They were very intimate--some thought under engagement to marry. Suddenly she accepted my brother, and old Zane turned out to be infatuated with his ward. We may call it rivalry and reminiscence."
Duff Salter, now full of smiles, proffered a pinch of snuff to his host, who declined it, but set out a bottle of brandy in reciprocal friendship.
"Go on," indicated Salter to the tablets.
"One morning, just before daybreak, my brother's wife, glancing out of this window--"
"In this room, you say, before daybreak?"
Calvin looked viciously at Duff Salter, who merely smiled.
"She saw," said Calvin Van de Lear, "an object come out of the trap-door on Zane's old residence and move under shelter of the ridge of the roof to the newly-tenanted dwelling in the same block, and there disappear down the similar trap."