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"I decided to let these two naive my attention to the others After careful deliberation I felt reasonably sure your father's assassin could not fail to be a , probably a man past middle life--at all events, I could safely say he was over twenty-one years of age Proceeding upon this assumption my list was reduced to ten names But how should I further continue this process of exclusion? This was the question which now confrontedthe gentlemen's acquaintance, which I did not then wish to do, and that was to ascertain what other books they had borrowed in of the Four' This was the course I determined to pursue

"If you ask ation, a successful outconise would be little short of miraculous, I can only say that I felt impelled to do so Perhaps the ihly each new theory which iree of probability, and perhaps it was due to so else--Cleopatra, perhaps, eh, Doctor?--I don't know I deter these ten men I made a careful list, with the assistance of an attendant, of ten books taken by each n of the Four,' and the other five just following it I h I began to see certain things of interest as orked upon it At length the whole hundred titles were spread before me, and I sat down to see what I could make of them I purposely reserved consideration of the books borrowed by Weltz and Rizzi until the last, because I had been able to learn nothing of them, and considered, therefore, that they were the most difficult persons in the list about whoht exhibited no syste One had read --I think I can remember the books in the order in which they were borrowed--'Thels,' 'David Copperfield,' 'The Story of an African Farn of the Four,' 'The Prisoner of Zenda,' 'The Dolly Dialogues,' 'The Yellow Aster,' 'The Superfluous Woman,' and 'Ideala' This is a fair sample of the other seven Not so, however, with Messrs Weltz and Rizzi The reading of thesea purpose behind it