CHAPTER 29 The Missing Witness

Mr. Raymond The voice was low in searching.

It reached me in my dreams, waked me, and caused me to look up.

Morning had begun to break, and by its light I saw standing the open door leading into

the dining-room.

The four-learn figure of the tramp who had been admitted into the house the night before,

every in perplexed, I was about to bid her be gone, when, to my great surprise, she

pulled out a red hanker-cheat from her pocket, and I recognized Q.

Read that, said he hastily advancing, and putting a slip of paper into my hand, and without

another word or look left to the room, closing the door behind him.

Rising, in considerable agitation, I took it to the window, and by the rapidly increasing

light succeeded in making out the rudely-scrawled lines as follows.

She is here, I have seen her, in the room marked with a cross in the accompanying plan.

Wait till eight o'clock, then go up, I will contrive some means of getting Mrs. Belden

out of the house.

Sketched below this was the following plan of the upper floor.

Hannah, then, was in the small back room over the dining-room, and I had not been deceived

in thinking I had heard steps overhead the evening before.

Greatly relieved, and yet at the same time much moved at the near prospect of being brought

face to face, with one who we had every reason to believe was acquainted with the dreadful

secret involved in the eleven-worth murder, I lay down once more, and endeavored to catch

another hour's rest.

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