greater, and though the past is unhappily beyond recall, since our Maker Himself cannot undo the work of yesterday, or obliterate events embalmed in vanished time, yet there is always the future; and if we could but read the past aright, which we never can, then the future would prove less of a painful riddle than mankind generally finds it.
"If, then, I can help you to read the past, I may at least modify your anxieties in the future; and should I, by a remote chance, be right in my suspicions, it is quite imperative that I place myself at your service for the sake of mankind. In a word, a great crime has been committed, and the situation is possibly such that further capital crimes will follow it. I affirm nothing, but I conceive the agency responsible for these murders to be still active, since the police have been so completely foiled. At Chadlands there may still remain an unsleeping danger to those who follow you—a danger, indeed, to all human life, so long as it is permitted to persist. I write, of course, assuming you to be desirous of clearing this abominable mystery, both for your own satisfaction and the credit of your house.
"There is but little to hope from me, and I would beg you not to feel sanguine in any way. Yet this I do believe: that if there is one man in the world to-day who holds the key of your tribulation, I am that man. One lives in hope that one may empty the world of so great a horror; and to do so would give one the most active satisfaction. But I promise nothing.
"If I should be on the right track, however,
