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"No; there was a great fire at Atlanta very shortly
after his death, and all her papers were destroyed."

"And yet she had a certificate of death. You say that
you saw it."

"Yes; she got a duplicate after the fire."

"Did you ever meet any one who knew her in America?"

"No."

"Did she ever talk of revisiting the place?"

"No."

"Or get letters from it?"

"No."

"Thank you. I should like to think over the matter a
little now. If the cottage is now permanently
deserted we may have some difficulty. If, on the
other hand, as I fancy is more likely, the inmates
were warned of your coming, and left before you entered
yesterday, then they may be back now, and we should
clear it all up easily. Let me advise you, then, to
return to Norbury, and to examine the windows of the
cottage again. If you have reason to believe that it
is inhabited, do not force your way in, but send a wire
to my friend and me. We shall be with you within an
hour of receiving it, and we shall then very soon get
to the bottom of the business."

"And if it is still empty?"

"In that case I shall come out to-morrow and talk it
over with you. Good-by; and, above all, do not fret
until you know that you really have a cause for it."

"I am afraid that this is a bad business, Watson,"
said my companion, as he returned after accompanying
Mr. Grant Munro to the door. "What do you make of
it?"

"It had an ugly sound," I answered.

"Yes. There's blackmail in it, or I am much
mistaken."

"And who is the blackmailer?"

"Well, it must be the creature who lives in the only
comfortable room in the place, and has her photograph
above his fireplace. Upon my word, Watson, there is
something very attractive about that livid face at the
window, and I would not have missed the case for
worlds."

"You have a theory?"

"Yes, a provisional one. But I shall be surprised if
it does not turn out to be correct. This woman's
first husband is in that cottage."

"Why do you think so?"

"How else can we explain her frenzied anxiety that her
second one should not enter it? The facts, as I read
them, are something like this: This woman was married
in America. Her husband developed some hateful
qualities; or shall we say that he contracted some
loathsome disease, and became a leper or an imbecile?
She flies from him at last, returns to England,
changes her name, and starts her life, as she thinks,
afresh. She has been married three years, and
believes that her position is quite secure, having
shown her husband the death certificate of some man
whose name she has assumed, when suddenly her
whereabouts is discovered by her first husband; or, we
may suppose, by some unscrupulous woman who has
attached herself to the invalid. They write to the
wife, and threaten to come and expose her. She asks
for a hundred pounds, and endeavors to buy them off.
They come in spite of it, and when the husband
mentions casually to the wife that there are new-comers

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