Evening star., 1912-09-22

"spectacles" remarkably well indicated.
Il thought ye'd loke to have this, Sorr,
came the grinnlng explanation.
Somehow, the detective credited his friend
with large amount of commonsense; so
he repressed the first angry question that
rose to his lips.
"How did you get hold of it," he asked.
Simplest thing in the wurrld, Sorr.
Sthrollin' along the lane opposite the Rosery
| meets Hopkins, an he ups an tells me all
about last night affair, or all that he knew.
What have you done wild the bird? = Mrs.
Kyrle ordered me to throw it away. She
hated the sight of it, says he. Give it to
me- says |. I'd loike to show it to my
kiddies.' So here it is.
81 am very much obliged to you. Is the
lady any the worse for her fright
"Not bit, Hopkins says. She KEEP the
claws off her face; but her arms were
scratched, an her dress was torn. She soon
recovered, though, an made SO little cf
the faintin fit that she went downstairs
again.
a thought she would" said Clancy dryly.
Then, with the hapless owl lying on a table
before his eyes, he unlocked the diary.
THE first letter, that from Kyrle to the
at the outset:
My DEAR ANrHoNY.-I am sending you
diary which have kept intermittently during
some years,-nearly six, to be exact, seeing
that it was begun year after my marriage TO
Josephine Delamar. daughter of the late Guliel-
mo Delamar, cotton merchant, OF New Orleans
| met her in Paris, and was fool enough to be
fascinated by her beauty and charm of manner;
though all my knowledge of life should have
warned me against marrying woman-or
girl. as she was then-whose exotic nature could
not fail to rebel against the conventions and
seeming rarrowness of an American middle
class home. Some of my subsequent sufferings
are depicted in the diary; so l shall not enlarge
on them now.
My present object in making you the books
custodian is this: I think am near death. !
am not i'll, nor suffering from any organic dis
ease which may suddenly become active. No,
if / believed in second sight, other such
owlish forebodings. | should fancy had been
given warning. Its hard thing to say; but
l kno7c that my wife desires my death, because
l have steadily refused to divorce her. l may
be wrong. horribly mistaken. as misanthropist
(Which have become) is apt to be. If am in
error have atoned for my blunder by making
will that leaves her in full possession of all
my property.
But-and now l reach the object l have at
heart-should you hear of my death in suspi
cious circumstances. or in circumstances which.
though not suspicious, point to accident
this letter and the diary to the authorities.
That is all An official investigation of the
nature and cause of my demise will follow in
due course. and my wife may be fully exon
Grated, which is my sincere wish.
l am sure can depend on you in this. Pro
vided am the mere victim of haucination.
l shall write on other matters as usual.
Believe me. Sincerely,
HERBERT w. KYRLE
Clancy, an impressionist if ever there was
one, had glanced once at the dead bird when
he read When he had made an end, he
gazed at the heap of rumpled feathers for
some seconds.
The second letter was the outcome of the
worthy professors grief and astonishment at
hearing of his friends death. He explained
that he did not read the newspapers regu-
larly, and had been inclined to look on the
depositing of the diary as freak on the part
of his old crony and correspondent, Herbert
Widlake Kyrle, until the news of the dis
covery of Kyrle's body in an open boat on
the high seas reached him in conversation at
luncheon party. He thought it his duty
then to fulfil instantly the sad task imposed
on him; though he hoped and believed that
Kyrle's peculiar state of mind alone mad led
to this curious bequest. The man had al
ways been slightly eccentric, and there were
not lacking signs, during later years, of