style="margin-right: 8%; margin-left: 8%"> nder & Co., ley Street, ter, N. Y. ark.

The paper might be valuable, and it might be worthless. It had evidently been around a small box or bottle. The address was evidently that of some firm doing business in some town in New York State. What the "ark" could stand for, he could not surmise.

As the detective left the Bardon house, he saw a middle-aged man entering the Langmore mansion. The man was well dressed and carried a dress-suit case.

"A visitor of some sort," he mused. "Perhaps a relative."

When he stepped up on the piazza Raymond Case came out to meet him.
The young man wished to know if he had learned anything from the doctor.

"Not a great deal," answered Adam Adams. "Who was that man who just came in?"

"Thomas Ostrello, one of Mrs. Langmore's sons by her first husband."

"Is he a frequent visitor here?"

"I believe not. He is a commercial traveler, and on the road nearly all the time."

"Has he been here since the tragedy?"

"No. He was here the day before it occurred, but went away in the evening. I suppose his mother's death has shocked him a good deal."

"I believe you said the Ostrellos are not well off?"

"No; they are poor, so Margaret told me. Both of the sons are on the road, one for a paint house and this one for a drug house. By the way, I am going to town, to see the coroner. Do you want to come along?"

"No, I'll see him later. I want to take a walk around this place first. I may pick up a stray clue."

Left to himself, Adam Adams walked slowly around the mansion, noting the several approaches. He looked in at the stable and the automobile shed, and strolled down to the brook. He made no noise, for it was his practice to move about as silently as possible and without attracting attention.

Suddenly he halted and stepped out of sight behind some bushes not far away from the brook. He heard a splashing, which told him that somebody was near.

CHAPTER V

THE MAN AT THE BROOK

Beside the brook stood a shabbily-dressed man, apparently fifty-five or sixty years old. He wore an old rusty black coat and a soft hat with a hole in it. His face was tanned and partly covered with a beard.

The man was acting in a manner to excite anybody's curiosity. He carried a stick in his hand, and was poking around in the water with it. Every once in a while he looked around, to see if anybody was observing him.

Straining his eyes, Adam Adams saw a strip of white floating on the water. Once or twice it disappeared. Finally the end of the strip caught on an overhanging bush, and then the strange man withdrew his cane from the brook.

As he turned around the detective dodged out of sight. Apparently satisfied that he was not observed, the strange man leaned down at the bank of the brook, took something from his pocket and placed it down on the moist dirt. Then he took another object from his pocket and repeated the operation.

"Can they be shoes he has in his hands?" mused the detective. "And if they are, what is he doing with them?"

Hearing the slamming of a door at the mansion, Adam Adams drew still further back among the bushes. A minute later he saw the man make a long leap, clear the brook, and hurry away among the trees and brushwood on the other side.

"Humph! Perhaps this is worth investigating," mused the detective, and made his way to the spot the strange individual had occupied. On the bank of the brook he saw the marks of the man's broad shoes and also some prints made by smaller shoes. The latter prints were irregular, and at once arrested the detective's attention. He smiled grimly to himself.

"Clue number one!" he muttered.

Adam Adams looked around in the water. Soon he came upon the strip of white, and, pulling on it, brought to light a white silk shirtwaist, torn to ribbons in front and at one sleeve. He wrung the water and mud from the garment and examined it. Inside of the collar band were the initials, "M. A. L."

"Margaret A. Langmore," he murmured. "Those initials are hers. If the shirtwaist was hers, how did that fellow get possession of it? And did he place it here or find it here?"

Drying the garment as much as possible, he placed it in his pocket, and continued his search around the vicinity. He spent fully an hour in the locality, and then walked back the way he had come, and into the mansion. There he found Thomas Ostrello In conversation with the policeman.

"It is a terrible blow to me," the commercial traveler was saying. "And to think I was here just the day before it happened! If I had remained here over night, it might not have occurred at all!"

"Well, that's the way things happen," answered the policeman. "Once I was at one end of my beat when a thief broke into a store at the other end and stole sixteen dollars and two hams."

"And I suppose they blamed you for it."

"Sure they did. I was laid off for a week, without pay. If anything happens it is always the poor copper who is to blame."

"Well, the family are not blaming you for this."

"They can't—especially as they've got the person who did the deed."

At this Thomas Ostrello shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know about that."

"You don't?"

"No. I'd hate to believe any girl could do such a fearful thing as this." The commercial traveler paused. "I'm going to take a look around. I suppose it's all right."

"Certainly, Mr. Ostrello," answered the policeman, and then the commercial man stepped into the library, closing the door after him.

Adam Adams had passed into the dining room, just back of the library, but had heard what was said. Now, looking through the doorway, which had a sliding door and a heavy curtain, the latter partly drawn, he saw the man glance around hurriedly, moving from one object to another in the library. He looked under the table and the chairs, in the corners, and even into the various bookcases. Then he came and knelt down before the safe, and tried the knob of the combination half a dozen times.

"He is more than ordinarily interested," reasoned the detective. "But then it was his own mother who was murdered."

The commercial man continued his search until he had covered every object in the room several times. He even looked behind the pictures, and into the drawer of the table, something which had escaped the coroner's eye when sealing up the desk. Adam Adams saw him shake his head in despair. He took a turn up and down the apartment and clenched his hands nervously.

"Gone!" he muttered to himself. "What could have become of it?"

He drew from his pocket a notebook he carried, and studied several items carefully. A long sigh escaped from his lips as he restored the notebook to his pocket.

As the commercial traveler moved toward the dining room, the detective stepped into a side apartment, used in the winter as a conservatory. He saw Thomas Ostrello make an examination of several places, including a sideboard. Then the woman who had been placed in charge of the downstairs portion of the mansion entered.

"Won't you have a bite to eat, Mr. Ostrello?" she asked.

"Perhaps so, later on. I do not feel like eating now. Can I take