"Perhaps, though sometimes what seems foolish, may be wise."
"Quite true. And now gentlemen, I regret the necessity of dismissing you, but I have a ball on hand for to-night, and must beg you to excuse us, that we may prepare for it. You know in the fashionable world we train for a ball, as athletes do for their sports. You will forgive my sending you away?"
This was her way and men never resented it. They simply obeyed. Mr. Barnes was delighted that both the other men would leave with him. He had prepared a trap for Mr. Mitchel, but now he would entice two birds into it.
CHAPTER VI.
MR. BARNES'S TRAP.
It must not be supposed from what has been related, that Mr. Barnes had lost any of his old time skill. That he did not yet quite understand the case upon which he was working, is little to be wondered at when it is remembered that less than two days had elapsed since the robbery had occurred, and that a great part of this time he had necessarily been absent from the city upon another case.
After his disappointment at discovering that the button which he had found was less valuable than he had at first supposed, he had decided upon a mode of procedure from which he hoped to gain much. He had seen many men flinch when brought unexpectedly into the presence of their murdered victim. He knew that many in a fit of passion, or even in cold blood, might have the nerve to take human life. Few resisted a shudder when shown the ghastly, mutilated, perhaps decomposing corpse. When he left the hotel that morning it was about ten o'clock. Whilst he had been convinced by Mr. Mitchel that the button found at the scene of the murder was not one of the original set, or rather that it could not be proven that it had been, he was equally satisfied, that the fact that it presented a portrait of Miss Remsen was significant. Thus, after all, it was possible that Mr. Mitchel had murdered the woman, or at least he had visited the apartment. In either case, supposing that he knew the woman was dead, it would be idle to take him up three flights of stairs to confront him with the body, for that would give him ample premonition of what was about to occur, and he would readily control his countenance. This is what the detective did: