"I recognized the odor at once," went on Mrs. Magnus. "It was from one of his cigars. When I opened the desk, I found a little heap of ashes on his ash tray, which I had been using to keep pins in, and the remnant of the cigar he had been smoking."
"He?" I repeated. "But why should you think—"
"Wait," she interrupted, "till you hear the rest. I cleaned off the tray and went through my day's work as usual. The next morning I found the same thing—and something more. Some one had been trying to write on the pad of paper on the desk."
"Trying to write?" I echoed.
"Yes, trying—as though some force were holding him back."
She went over to the desk, unlocked a little drawer, and took out several sheets of paper.
"Here is what I found that morning," she said, and handed me a sheet from an ordinary writing pad.
I saw scrawled across it an indecipherable jumble of words. She had expressed it exactly—it seemed as though some one had been trying to write with a weight clogging his hand. And there was something about this scrap of paper—something convincing and authentic—which struck heavily at my skepticism. Here was what a lawyer would call evidence.
"It kept on from day to day," continued Mrs. Magnus, sitting down again. "Every morning the little heap of ashes and fragment of cigar, and a scrawl like that—until finally, one morning, I understood what was happening in this room, for three words were legible."
She handed me another sheet of paper. At the top were the words, "My dear wife," and under them again an indecipherable scrawl.