"
If he had intended to give me a start in payment for my previous
rebuff he did not succeed; for my nerves had grown steady and my arm
firm at the glimpse I had caught of the shelf below me. The fine
brown powder I had scattered there had been displaced in five distinct
spots, and not by my fingers. I had preferred to risk the loss of my
balance, rather than rest my hand on the shelf, but he had taken no
such precaution. The clue I so anxiously desired and for which I had
so recklessly worked, was obtained.
But when half an hour later I found an opportunity of measuring these
marks and comparing them with those upstairs, I did not enjoy the full
triumph I had promised myself. For the two impressions utterly failed
to coincide, thus proving that whoever the person was who had been in
this house with Mrs. Jeffrey on the evening she died, it was not her
uncle David.
VIII
SLYER WOES
Let me repeat. The person who had left the marks of his presence
in the upper chamber of the Moore house was not the man popularly
known as Uncle David. Who, then, had it been? But one name
suggested itself to me, - Mr. Jeffrey.
It was not so easy for me to reach this man as it had been for me
to reach his singular and unimaginative uncle. In the first place,
his door had been closed to every one since his wife's death.
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