"Here are the letters," said Whiteside, after the man had gone.
Two neat piles of letters were arranged on Mrs. Rider's desk, and Tarling drew up a chair.
"This is the lot?" he said.
"Yes," said Whiteside. "I've been searching the house since eight o'clock and I can find no others. Those on the right are all from Milburgh. You'll find they're simply signed with an initial—a characteristic of his—but they bear his town address."
"You've looked through them?" asked Tarling
"Read 'em all," replied the other. "There's nothing at all incriminating in any of them. They're what I would call bread and butter letters, dealing with little investments which Milburgh has made in his wife's name—or rather, in the name of Mrs. Rider. It's easy to see from these how deeply the poor woman was involved without her knowing that she was mixing herself up in a great conspiracy."
Tarling assented. One by one he took the letters from their envelopes, read them and replaced them. He was half-way through the pile when he stopped and carried a letter to the window.
"Listen to this," he said:
"Forgive the smudge, but I am in an awful hurry, and I have got my fingers inky through the overturning of an ink bottle."
"Nothing startling in that," said Whiteside with a smile.