PUZZLED.

Several days after meeting Shadow in his disguise of a mulatto, I was the recipient of a letter which puzzled me not a little.

The text was simple enough.

The letter read:

"Mr. Howard.—Herewith I return you the money you so kindly loaned me on an occasion that was filled with sadness for me. You will remember the occasion to which I refer—when Tom Smith was killed, and you so generously provided me with the means of interring him in mother earth.

"That I am deeply grateful you may rest assured, and perhaps at some future time I may be able to testify to the depth of my gratitude.

"Accept my thanks with the money I return, a kind of interest on the loan, which I am satisfied you will best like.

"Yours gratefully,

"Nellie Millbank."

A very nicely worded and straightforward letter. Don't you think so?

Of course you do.

Then, why was I puzzled?

Simply because when I received the letter, and before opening it, I said as I glanced at the penmanship of the address:

"Another letter from Shadow," and then, on opening it, found that it was not.

I had preserved Shadow's letters or notes, and these I now brought out and compared with this epistle from Nellie Millbank.

The penmanship was "as like as two peas."

Now, then, if you have read the foregoing chapters with any interest, you can see why I was puzzled.

Was Nellie Millbank the mysterious little detective?

As I said, provided your interest has been deep enough, you know that I had strong reasons, and many of them, for supposing Shadow to be none other than young Mat Morris.

Let us recount some reasons.

I had taxed Shadow with being Mat Morris, and he had not denied it.

Then, I had paid Shadow five hundred dollars, and had afterwards seen the very bills themselves in the hands of Mat's mother.

This last circumstance was of itself strong evidence that Mat and Shadow were one and the same person.

Then there was the manner Shadow had of carrying himself—Mat Morris' style exactly.

A person's manner of bearing himself, and his mode of walking, and the use of his hands and head when speaking, are things that no disguise can hide.

Knowing this, I had been ready to almost take an oath as to the true identity of Shadow.

Yet here comes a letter that completely upsets all my faith in my powers of penetration.

If the writing of Nellie Millbank and of Shadow was the same, then Mat evidently was not Shadow. And if Mat was not Shadow, who was?

Nellie Millbank?

It was barely possible.

That slip of a girl do what I knew Shadow was capable of doing, as well as what he had done?

It was not to be credited.

And yet—the similarity of the handwriting. How was that to be accounted for?

I thought of Mrs. Morris.

I intended to go and show her one of the Shadow letters, and inquire if she knew the writing.

When I arrived at the house where Mrs. Morris lived, it was to learn that she had moved away early that morning.

Where to, nobody knew.

Balked in this direction, I turned my steps toward the house of the deputy sheriff, in a cell beneath whose house, it will be remembered, I had in confinement Dick Stanton, the false detective.

No sooner did the treacherous detective see me than he began whining like a whipped cur, and begged like a dog to be let go, or be dealt with mercifully.

If I would only release him, he said, he would "give away" his pals of the sugar-house, besides putting into my hands numbers of clews in connection with various crimes.

"And they won't be false scents," he said earnestly. "I'll deal square with you, Howard, I swear I will. It will get promotion for you, sure, if you bag the game I can put you on the track of."

I had, however, paid him a visit for a particular purpose, and evading all his questions and turning a deaf ear to his entreaties, I told him I wanted to know if the prisoner who had been confined in the black hole was male or female.

He looked at me in surprise.

"Male or female?" he said.

"Yes."

"Male, of course."

"You are sure of it?"

"Sure of it? Why, he was a man just as much as you are a man, or I am one."

"You are not a man—except in name," I rejoined (and the words made him wince) "so do not bring yourself into the comparison."

I made him give me a close description of the prisoner who had been confined in the black hole, and after listening to it, I could have no manner of doubt that the person was other than Mat Morris.

"And," volunteered Stanton, "moreover, he was a surly sort of a customer. We couldn't get a word out of him."

This tallied with Shadow.

I left Stanton still ironed, despite his prayers to at least have the handcuffs taken off.

"You deserve all the punishment you are enduring," I bitingly told him.

I no longer doubted that Mat Morris and the mysterious detective were one and the same person. All the evidence pointed toward that conclusion.

It was a stickler.

I dropped in to see a writing expert, and after examining them, he said that the two specimens might or might not be written by the same person.

"It is penmanship as taught in our public schools," he said. "Pupils are drilled into a set way of forming their letters, as a consequence of which there is a great similarity in writing until the persons have been for years out of school."

That settled it.

The similarity was one caused by education, and I was more than ever convinced of Mat and Shadow being one individual.

I went home in a thoughtful mood.

There I found a letter awaiting me from the chief, asking why I had not reported in a certain matter which had been placed in my hands.

I felt conscience-stricken.

In my great interest in what concerned Shadow I had neglected my duty, to which the last few hours should have been devoted, instead of to an endeavor to find out whether Shadow was Mat Morris, or Nellie Millbank, or somebody else.

Immediately I donned the disguise in which I had acted a part, and wound my way into the confidence of Woglom and his companion, by means of which I had learned of the prisoner in the black hole.

At once I started out.

In their usual place of resort I, that evening, encountered the precious pair of rascals.

They were rather shy of me at first, not liking my sudden and unaccounted-for absence, but an off-hand manner and a few drinks fixed matters all right.

After that they seemed to take to me amazingly, and I noticed them glancing first at me and then at each other with an askance expression.

I knew that something was afoot, and patiently waited to hear what it was.

After awhile they withdrew to a little distance and began to earnestly converse, concerning me, I was quite positive.

Such indeed was the truth.

They were discussing the advisability of taking me into their confidence, and making me a party in a villainous scheme that was already hatched.

"Want to go into a big job with us?" Woglom asked me, on their resuming their seats.

"Certainly, if there's enough 'swag' to pay for the trouble," I replied. "What is the line?"

My answer satisfied them, and they unfolded their scheme. It was a scheme into which I entered for a purpose; they were to put it into execution that night, and I accompanied them—accompanied them into as great a peril as ever threatened my life.

I shudder, even now, when I think of that night.