Page:Miss Madelyn Mack Detective.pdf/112

necessity of preserving so small a part of the ashes?

"I will admit frankly that I was about to give up the problem in disgust when I remembered my examination of the waste paper basket and the grate. I had reasoned that Mr. Endicott's flight had been made necessary after he entered the house. By what? What more likely than a message, perhaps a note, perhaps a telegram? In nine cases out of ten, a nervous man would have burned or destroyed such a message; but, in spite of my closest search, I found no traces of it. It was not until I was moving away from my saucer of ashes that my search was rewarded. In the tray was a single torn fragment of white paper.

"There were no others. Either the shreds had been carefully gathered up after the message was destroyed—which was hardly likely—or the fragment before me had been torn from a corner in a moment of agitation. But why had I found it in the ashes?"

Madelyn glanced up at Mr. Van Sutton with an abrupt turning of the subject. "Do you ever read 'Ovid'?"

The owner of "The Maples" gazed at her with a frown of bewilderment.

"Really, you are missing a decided treat, Mr. Van Sutton. There is a quaint charm about those