Chapter 13

The fire, however, pointed out one odd fact which controverted the reconstructions made by detectives months before. The latter, suggesting the dried scum to have drained in from the swamp, believed that the house timbers had floated out to the sides of the wall--there to arrange themselves in a series of piles! The absurdity of such a theory showed even more plainly in the fact that _if_ the scum had filtered through in such a flood, the timbers most certainly had been dragged into piles _previously_! Some had bur…