"It's raining," she demurred, "and I haven't my raincoat here."
"I brushed by one in the hall," he said, and stepping back he lifted down a somewhat shabby gray raincoat and flung it toward her. She picked it up, and slipped it on. It was large, but still she could wear it, and while she stood in the middle of the room hesitating, she slipped her hands into the capacious pockets.
"Well?" demanded Frank impatiently.
The girl did not answer, but stood staring ahead of her. Slowly she raised her left hand, pressing the thumb between her eyebrows, and taking the right hand from the raincoat pocket, she stretched it out, the fingers groping uncertainly. She turned so white that the young man in the doorway stared, frightened, yet under a spell that forbade his moving. Suddenly the trembling, questioning hand grew rigid, and without an instant's hesitation she turned and walked to the divan, and laid her hand upon the bundle.
"It is here, Frank," she said quietly. "Turn up the light, and cut this cord."
He did so, and as the paper fell away from the dictionary, she opened the heavy volume and their eyes fell upon a large manila envelope plainly addressed to "Miss Silvia Holland, City Investment Building, New York." The girl laid her hand upon it.
"Wait a minute; let me tell you what happened," she said. "When the postman came she gave him the letter for Alice, and he gave her the box. She didn't give him this letter because she hadn't stamps enough—see, it has but one—or perhaps she meant to use it as a threat; there was somebody who had a motive for killing her. The woman across the hall called her and she slipped this envelope into the dictionary and went out, leaving her door open; old Mr. Dillon came up and got the book; he's just been telling me about it. They never opened it, and after her body was found—Mrs. Bell's, I mean—his wife was so upset that she went to her daughter, and they forgot it entirely until to-night. When Mrs. Bell came back, she opened the package the postman had given her, and she never had a chance to miss anything after that."
She lifted her hand, and Frank picked up the envelope and looked at it and then at her.
"I believe you have solved the mystery," he said, "and that all you have not learned will be revealed when Silvia opens this envelope. Oh, this is wonderful, Carroll! I'll get a taxi, and we'll go to her at once."
"I wouldn't," said the girl. "It'll be nearly midnight by the time we can get there, and if it is bad news—which it isn't—there's nothing she can do to-night, and if it is good—and I am sure it is, for us at least—it can wait until morning. Whichever it is, she needs a night's sleep before she faces any new complication."