The Man in Lower Ten .......................................................................................................................................1

Mary Roberts Rhinehart ...........................................................................................................................1

McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business. I never liked it, and since the strange case

of the man in lower ten, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a

network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty,

and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding. I never see a shivering, whitefaced wretch

in the prisoners' dock that I do not hark back with shuddering horror to the strange events on the Pullman car

Ontario, between Washington and Pittsburg, on the night of September ninth, last.

McKnight could tell the story a great deal better than I, although he can not spell three consecutive words

"It didn't happen to me, anyhow," he protested, when I put it up to him. "And nobody cares for secondhand

thrills. Besides, you want the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that. I'm a lawyer."

So am I, although there have been times when my assumption in that particular has been disputed. I am

unmarried, and just old enough to dance with the grownup little sisters of the girls I used to know. I am fond

of outdoors, prefer horses to the aforesaid grownup little sisters, am without sentiment (am crossed out and

was substituted.Ed.) and completely ruled and frequently routed by my housekeeper, an elderly widow.

In fact, of all the men of my acquaintance, I was probably the most prosaic, the least adventurous, the one

man in a hundred who would be likely to go without a deviation from the normal through the orderly

So it was a queer freak of the demons of chance to perch on my unsusceptible thirtyyearold chest, tie me

up with a crime, ticket me with a love affair, and start me on that sensational and not always respectable

journey that ended so surprisingly less than three weeks later in the firm's private office. It had been the most

remarkable period of my life. I would neither give it up nor live it again under any inducement, and yet all

It was really McKnight's turn to make the next journey. I had a tournament at Chevy Chase for Saturday, and

a short yacht cruise planned for Sunday, and when a man has been grinding at statute law for a week, he

needs relaxation. But McKnight begged off. It was not the first time he had shirked that summer in order to

run down to Richmond, and I was surly about it. But this time he had a new excuse. "I wouldn't be able to

look after the business if I did go," he said. He has a sort of wideeyed frankness that makes one ashamed to

doubt him. "I'm always car sick crossing the mountains. It's a fact, Lollie. Seesawing over the peaks does it.

Why, crossing the Alleghany Mountains has the Gulf Stream to Bermuda beaten to a frazzle."

So I gave him up finally and went home to pack. He came later in the evening with his machine, the

Cannonball, to take me to the station, and he brought the forged notes in the Bronson case.

"Guard them with your life," he warned me. "They are more precious than honor. Sew them in your chest

protector, or wherever people keep valuables. I never keep any. I'll not be happy until I see Gentleman Andy

He sat down on my clean collars, found my cigarettes and struck a match on the mahogany bed post with one

"Where's the Pirate?" he demanded. The Pirate is my housekeeper, Mrs Klopton, a very worthy woman, so

labeled and libeled because of a ferocious pair of eyes and what McKnight called a bucaneering nose. I

"Keep your voice down, Richey," I said. "She is looking for the evening paper to see if it is going to rain. She

The collars being damaged beyond repair, he left them and went to the window. He stood there for some

time, staring at the blackness that represented the wall of the house next door.

"It's raining now," he said over his shoulder, and closed the window and the shutters. Something in his voice

"Who lives next door?" he inquired in a perfunctory tone, after a pause. I was packing my razor.

"House is empty," I returned absently. "If the landlord would put it in some sort of shape "

"Yes." I was impatient. "Along with my certificates of registration, baptism and vaccination. Whoever wants

"Well, I would move them, if I were you. Somebody in the next house was confoundedly anxious to see

I scoffed at the idea, but nevertheless I moved the papers, putting them in my travelingbag, well down at the

"I have a hunch that you are going to have trouble," he said, as I locked the alligator bag. "Darned if I like

"You have a congenital dislike to start anything on any old day," I retorted, still sore from my lost Saturday.

"And if you knew the owner of that house as I do you would know that if there was any one at that window

"Sorry, but I didn't, Mrs. Klopton," McKnight called. "The Cubs won, three to nothing." He listened,

grinning, as she moved away with little irritated rustles of her black silk gown.

I finished my packing, changed my collar and was ready to go. Then very cautiously we put out the light and

opened the shutters. The window across was merely a deeper black in the darkness. It was closed and dirty.

And yet, probably owing to Richey's suggestion, I had an uneasy sensation of eyes staring across at me. The

"We'll have to run for it," I said in a whisper. "She's down there with a package of some sort, sandwiches

I had a kaleidoscopic view of Mrs. Klopton in the lower hall, holding out an armful of such traveling

impedimenta as she deemed essential, while beside her, Euphemia, the colored housemaid, grinned over a

"Awfully sorryno timeback Sunday," I panted over my shoulder. Then the door closed and the car was

McKnight bent forward and stared at the facade of the empty house next door as we passed. It was black,

"I'd like to hold a postmortem on that corpse of a house," he said thoughtfully. "By George, I've a notion to

With one hand on the steering wheel McKnight held out the other for my cigarette case. "Perhaps," he said;

"A woman!" I laughed outright. "You have been looking too hard at the picture in the back of your watch,

But McKnight was growing sulky: he sat looking rigidly ahead, and he did not speak again until he brought

the Cannonball to a stop at the station. Even then it was only a perfunctory remark. He went through the gate

with me, and with five minutes to spare, we lounged and smoked in the train shed. My mind had slid away

from my surroundings and had wandered to a polo pony that I couldn't afford and intended to buy anyhow.

"For heaven's sake, don't look so martyred," he burst out; "I know you've done all the traveling this summer. I

know you're missing a game tomorrow. But don't be a patient mother; confound it, I have to go to

"Oh, don't mind me," I observed politely. "Personally, I wouldn't change places with you. What's her name

"West," he snapped. "Don't try to be funny. And all I have to say, Blakeley, is that if you ever fall in love I

The trip west was without incident. I played bridge with a furniture dealer from Grand Rapids, a sales agent

for a Pittsburg iron firm and a young professor from an eastern college. I won three rubbers out of four,

finished what cigarettes McKnight had left me, and went to bed at one o'clock. It was growing cooler, and the

rain had ceased. Once, toward morning, I wakened with a start, for no apparent reason, and sat bolt upright. I

had an uneasy feeling that some one had been looking at me, the same sensation I had experienced earlier in

the evening at the window. But I could feel the bag with the notes, between me and the window, and with my

arm thrown over it for security, I lapsed again into slumber. Later, when I tried to piece together the

fragments of that journey, I remembered that my coat, which had been folded and placed beyond my restless

tossing, had been rescued in the morning from a heterogeneous jumble of blankets, evening papers and

cravat, had been shaken out with profanity and donned with wrath. At the time, nothing occurred to me but

the necessity of writing to the Pullman Company and asking them if they ever traveled in their own cars. I

"If they are built to scale, why not take a man of ordinary stature as your unit?" I 'wrote mentally. "I can not

I was more cheerful after I had had a cup of coffee in the Union Station. It was too early to attend to business,

and I lounged in the restaurant and hid behind the morning papers. As I had expected, they had got hold of

my visit and its object. On the first page was a staring announcement that the forged papers in the Bronson

case had been brought to Pittsburg. Underneath, a telegram from Washington stated that Lawrence Blakeley,

of Blakeley and McKnight, had left for Pittsburg the night before, and that, owing to the approaching trial of

the Bronson case and the illness of John Gilmore, the Pittsburg millionaire, who was the chief witness for the

prosecution, it was supposed that the visit was intimately concerned with the trial.

I looked around apprehensively. There were no reporters yet in sight, and thankful to have escaped notice I

paid for my breakfast and left. At the cabstand I chose the least dilapidated hansom I could find, and giving

I was just in time. As the cab turned and rolled off, a slim young man in a straw hat separated himself from a

But the cabby did not hear, or perhaps did not care to. We jogged comfortably along, to my relief, leaving the

young man far behind. I avoid reporters on principle, having learned long ago that I am an easy mark for a

It was perhaps nine o'clock when I left the station. Our way was along the boulevard which hugged the side

of one of the city's great hills. Far below, to the left, lay the railroad tracks and the seventy times seven

looming stacks of the mills. The white mist of the river, the grays and blacks of the smoke blended into a

halfrevealing haze, dotted here and there with fire. It was unlovely, tremendous. Whistler might have

painted it with its pathos, its majesty, but he would have missed what made it infinitely suggestive the rattle

and roar of iron on iron, the rumble of wheels, the throbbing beat, against the ears, of fire and heat and brawn

Something of this I voiced to the grim old millionaire who was responsible for at least part of it. He was

propped up in bed in his East end home, listening to the market reports read by a nurse, and he smiled a little

"I can't see much beauty in it myself," he said. "But it's our badge of prosperity. The full dinner pail here

means a nose that looks like a flue. Pittsburg without smoke wouldn't be Pittsburg, any more than New York

prohibition would be New York. Sit down for a few minutes, Mr. Blakeley. Now, Miss Gardner,

The nurse resumed her reading in a monotonous voice. She read literally and without understanding, using

initials and abbreviations as they came. But the shrewd old man followed her easily. Once, however, he

As the nurse droned along, I found myself looking curiously at a photograph in a silver frame on the bedside

table. It was the picture of a girl in white, with her hands clasped loosely before her. Against the dark

background her figure stood out slim and young. Perhaps it was the rather grim environment, possibly it was

my mood, but although as a general thing photographs of young girls make no appeal to me, this one did. I

found my eyes straying back to it. By a little finesse I even made out the name written across the corner,

Mr. Gilmore lay back among his pillows and listened to the nurse's listless voice. But he was watching me

from under his heavy eyebrows, for when the reading was over, and we were alone, he indicated the picture

"I keep it there to remind myself that I am an old man," he said. "That is my granddaughter, Alison West."

I expressed the customary polite surprise, at which, finding me responsive, he told me his age with a chuckle

of pride. More surprise, this time genuine. From that we went to what he ate for breakfast and did not eat for

luncheon, and then to his reserve power, which at sixtyfive becomes a matter for thought. And so, in a wide

"Father was a rascal," John Gilmore said, picking up the frame. "The happiest day of my life was when I

knew he was safely dead in bed and not hanged. If the child had looked like him, I well, she doesn't. She's a

I had produced the notes by that time, and replacing the picture Mr. Gilmore gathered his spectacles from

beside it. He went over the four notes methodically, examining each carefully and putting it down before he

"They're not so bad," he said thoughtfully. "Not so bad. But I never saw them before. That's my unofficial

signature. I am inclined to think " he was speaking partly to himself "to think that he has got hold of a

letter of mine, probably to Alison. Bronson was a friend of her rapscallion of a father."

I took Mr. Gilmore's deposition and put it into my travelingbag with the forged notes. When I saw them

again, almost three weeks later, they were unrecognizable, a mass of charred paper on a copper ashtray. In the

interval other and bigger things had happened: the Bronson forgery case had shrunk beside the greater and

more imminent mystery of the man in lower ten. And Alison West had come into the story and into my life.

I lunched alone at the Gilmore house, and went back to the city at once. The sun had lifted the mists, and a

fresh summer wind had cleared away the smoke pall. The boulevard was full of cars flying countryward for

the Saturday halfholiday, toward golf and tennis, green fields and babbling girls. I gritted my teeth and

thought of McKnight at Richmond, visiting the lady with the geographical name. And then, for the first time,

I associated John Gilmore's granddaughter with the "West" that McKnight had irritably flung at me.

I still carried my travelingbag, for McKnight's vision at the window of the empty house had not been

without effect. I did not transfer the notes to my pocket, and, if I had, it would not have altered the situation

"I warned you," he reminded me. "I told you there were queer things coming, and to be on your guard. You

"It would have been of exactly as much use as a bucket of snow in Africa," I retorted. "If I had never closed

my eyes, or if I had kept my finger on the trigger of a sixshooter (which is novelesque for revolver), the

result would have been the same. And the next time you want a little excitement with every variety of thrill

thrown in, I can put you by way of it. You begin by getting the wrong berth in a Pullman car, and end "

"Oh, I know how it ends," he finished shortly. "Don't you suppose the whole thing's written on my spinal

But I am wandering again. That is the difficulty with the unprofessional storyteller: he yaws back and forth

and can't keep in the wind; he drops his characters overboard when he hasn't any further use for them and

drowns them; he forgets the coffeepot and the fryingpan and all the other small essentials, and, if he carries

a love affair, he mutters a fervent "Allah be praised" when he lands them, drenched with adventures, at the

I put in a thoroughly unsatisfactory afternoon. Time dragged eternally. I dropped in at a summer vaudeville,

and bought some ties at a haberdasher's. I was bored but unexpectant; I had no premonition of what was to

come. Nothing unusual had ever happened to me; friends of mine had sometimes sailed the high seas of

adventure or skirted the coasts of chance, but all of the shipwrecks had occurred after a woman passenger had

been taken on. "Ergo," I had always said "no women!" I repeated it to myself that evening almost savagely,

when I found my thoughts straying back to the picture of John Gilmore's granddaughter. I even argued as I

"Haven't you troubles enough," I reflected, "without looking for more? Hasn't Bad News gone lame, with a

matinee race booked for next week? Otherwise aren't you comfortable? Isn't your house in order? Do you

want to sell a pony in order to have the library done over in mission or the drawingroom in gold? Do you

Lay it to the long idle afternoon, to the new environment, to anything you like, but I began to think that

perhaps I did. I was confoundedly lonely. For the first time in my life its even course began to waver: the

needle registered warning marks on the matrimonial seismograph, lines vague enough, but lines.

My alligator bag lay at my feet, still locked. While I waited for my coffee I leaned back and surveyed the

people incuriously. There were the usual couples intent on each other: my new state of mind made me regard

them with tolerance. But at the next table, where a man and woman dined together, a different atmosphere

prevailed. My attention was first caught by the woman's face. She had been speaking earnestly across the

table, her profile turned to me. I had noticed casually her earnest manner, her somber clothes, and the great

mass of odd, bronzecolored hair on her neck. But suddenly she glanced toward me and the utter

hopelessness almost tragedy of her expression struck me with a shock. She half closed her eyes and drew a

Neither one was eating. He sat low in his chair, his chin on his chest, ugly folds of thick flesh protruding over

his collar. He was probably fifty, bald, grotesque, sullen, and yet not without a suggestion of power. But he

had been drinking; as I looked, he raised an unsteady hand and summoned a waiter with a wine list.

The young woman bent across the table and spoke again quickly. She had unconsciously raised her voice.

Not beautiful, in her earnestness and stress she rather interested me. I had an idle inclination to advise the

waiter to remove the bottled temptation from the table. I wonder what would have happened if I had?

Suppose Harrington had not been intoxicated when he entered the Pullman car Ontario that night!

For they were about to make a journey, I gathered, and the young woman wished to go alone. I drank three

cups of coffee, which accounted for my wakefulness later, and shamelessly watched the tableau before me.

The woman's protest evidently went for nothing: across the table the man grunted monosyllabic replies and

grew more and more lowering and sullen. Once, during a brief unexpected pianissimo in the music, her voice

In spite of my interest I would have forgotten the whole incident at once, erased it from my mind as one does

the inessentials and clutterings of memory, had I not met them again, later that evening, in the Pennsylvania

station. The situation between them had not visibly altered: the same dogged determination showed in the

man's face, but the young woman daughter or wife? I wondered had drawn down her veil and I could

I bought my berth after waiting in a line of some eight or ten people. When, step by step, I had almost

reached the window, a tall woman whom I had not noticed before spoke to me from my elbow. She had a

"Will you try to get me a lower when you buy yours?" she asked. "I have traveled for three nights in uppers."

I consented, of course; beyond that I hardly noticed the woman. I had a vague impression of height and a

certain amount of stateliness, but the crowd was pushing behind me, and some one was standing on my foot. I

got two lowers easily, and, turning with the change and berths, held out the tickets.

At random I gave her lower eleven, and called a porter to help her with her luggage. I followed them leisurely

I looked into my car, but it presented the peculiarly unattractive appearance common to sleepers. The berths

were made up; the center aisle was a path between walls of dingy, breezerepelling curtains, while the two

seats at each end of the car were piled high with suitcases and umbrellas. The perspiring porter was trying to

be six places at once: somebody has said that Pullman porters are black so they won't show the dirt, but they

Ninefifteen was an outrageous hour to go to bed, especially since I sleep little or not at all on the train, so I

made my way to the smoker and passed the time until nearly eleven with cigarettes and a magazine. The car

was very close. It was a warm night, and before turning in I stood a short time in the vestibule. The train had

been stopping at frequent intervals, and, finding the brakeman there, I asked the trouble.

It seemed that there was a hotbox on the next car, and that not only were we late, but we were delaying the

second section, just behind. I was beginning to feel pleasantly drowsy, and the air was growing cooler as we

got into the mountains. I said good night to the brakeman and went back to my berth. To my surprise, lower

ten was already occupied a suitcase projected from beneath, a pair of shoes stood on the floor, and from

behind the curtains came the heavy, unmistakable breathing of deep sleep. I hunted out the porter and

"Are you asleep, sir?" asked the porter, leaning over deferentially. No answer forthcoming, he opened the

curtains and looked in. Yes, the intruder was asleep very much asleep and an overwhelming odor of

whisky proclaimed that he would probably remain asleep until morning. I was irritated. The car was full, and

I was not disposed to take an upper in order to allow this drunken interloper to sleep comfortably in my berth.

"You'll have to get out of this," I said, shaking him angrily. But he merely grunted and turned over. As he did

so, I saw his features for the first time. It was the quarrelsome man of the restaurant.

I was less disposed than ever to relinquish my claim, but the porter, after a little quiet investigation, offered a

solution of the difficulty. "There's no one in lower nine," he suggested, pulling open the curtains just across.

"It's likely nine's his berth, and he's made a mistake, owing to his condition. You'd better take nine, sir."

I did, with a firm resolution that if nine's rightful owner turned up later I should be just as unwakable as the

man opposite. I undressed leisurely, making sure of the safety of the forged notes, and placing my grip as

Being a man of systematic habits, I arranged my clothes carefully, putting my shoes out for the porter to

polish, and stowing my collar and scarf in the little hammock swung for the purpose.

At last, with my pillows so arranged that I could see out comfortably, and with the unhygieniclooking

blanket turned back I have always a distrust of those muchused affairs I prepared to wait gradually for

But sleep did not visit me. The train came to frequent, grating stops, and I surmised the hot box again. I am

not a nervous man, but there was something chilling in the thought of the second section pounding along

behind us. Once, as I was dozing, our locomotive whistled a shrill warning "You keep back where you

belong," it screamed to my drowsy ears, and from somewhere behind came a chastened "AllrightIwill."

I grew more and more wideawake. At Cresson I got up on my elbow and blinked out at the station lights.

Some passengers boarded the train there and I heard a woman's low tones, a southern voice, rich and full.

Then quiet again. Every nerve was tense: time passed, perhaps ten minutes, possibly half an hour. Then,

without the slightest warning, as the train rounded a curve, a heavy body was thrown into my berth. The

incident, trivial as it seemed, was startling in its suddenness, for although my ears were painfully strained and

awake, I had heard no step outside. The next instant the curtain hung limp again; still without a sound, my

disturber had slipped away into the gloom and darkness. In a frenzy of wakefulness, I sat up, drew on a pair

>From a berth across, probably lower ten, came that particular aggravating snore which begins lightly,

delicately, faintly soprano, goes down the scale a note with every breath, and, after keeping the listener tense

with expectation, ends with an explosion that tears the very air. I was more and more irritable: I sat on the

edge of the berth and hoped the snorer would choke to death. He had considerable vitality, however; he

withstood one shock after another and survived to start again with new vigor. In desperation I found some

cigarettes and one match, piled my blankets over my grip, and drawing the curtains together as though the

I was not clad for dress parade. Is it because the male is so restricted to gloom in his everyday attire that he

blossoms into gaudy colors in his pajamas and dressinggowns? It would take a Turk to feel at home before

an audience in my red and yellow bathrobe, a Christmas remembrance from Mrs. Klopton, with slippers to

So, naturally, when I saw a feminine figure on the platform, my first instinct was to dodge. The woman,

however, was quicker than I; she gave me a startled glance, wheeled and disappeared, with a flash of two

Cigarette box in one hand, match in the other, I leaned against the uncertain frame of the door and gazed after

her vanished figure. The mountain air flapped my bathrobe around my bare ankles, my one match burned to

the end and went out, and still I stared. For I had seen on her expressive face a haunting look that was horror,

nothing less. Heaven knows, I am not psychological. Emotions have to be written large before I can read

them. But a woman in trouble always appeals to me, and this woman was more than that. She was in deadly

If I had not been afraid of being ridiculous, I would have followed her. But I fancied that the apparition of a

man in a red and yellow bathrobe, with an unkempt thatch of hair, walking up to her and assuring her that

he would protect her would probably put her into hysterics. I had done that once before, when burglars had

tried to break into the house, and had startled the parlor maid into bed for a week. So I tried to assure myself

that I had imagined the lady's distress or caused it, perhaps and to dismiss her from my mind. Perhaps she

was merely anxious about the unpleasant gentleman of the restaurant. I thought smugly that I could have told

her all about him: that he was sleeping the sleep of the just and the intoxicated in a berth that ought, by all

that was fair and right, to have been mine, and that if I were tied to a man who snored like that I should have

him anesthetized and his soft palate put where it would never again flap like a loose sail in the wind.

We passed Harrisburg as I stood there. It was starlight, and the great crests of the Alleghanies had given way

to low hills. At intervals we passed smudges of gray white, no doubt in daytime comfortable farms, which

McKnight says is a good way of putting it, the farms being a lot more comfortable than the people on them.

I was growing drowsy: the woman with the bronze hair and the horrified face was fading in retrospect. It was

colder, too, and I turned with a shiver to go in. As I did so a bit of paper fluttered into the air and settled on

my sleeve, like a butterfly on a gorgeous red and yellow blossom. I picked it up curiously and glanced at it. It

There were only parts of four words on the scrap, but it left me puzzled and thoughtful. It read, "ower ten,

No solution offering itself, I went back to my berth. The snorer across had apparently strangled, or turned

over, and so after a time I dropped asleep, to be awakened by the morning sunlight across my face.

I felt for my watch, yawning prodigiously. I reached under the pillow and failed to find it, but something

scratched the back of my hand. I sat up irritably and nursed the wound, which was bleeding a little. Still

drowsy, I felt more cautiously for what I supposed had been my scarf pin, but there was nothing there. Wide

awake now, I reached for my travelingbag, on the chance that I had put my watch in there. I had drawn the

satchel to me and had my hand on the lock before I realized that it was not my own!

Mine was of alligator hide. I had killed the beast in Florida, after the expenditure of enough money to have

bought a house and enough energy to have built one. The bag I held in my hand was a black one, sealskin, I

think. The staggering thought of what the loss of my bag meant to me put my finger on the bell and kept it

"Did you ring, sir?" he asked, poking his head through the curtains obsequiously. McKnight objects that

nobody can poke his head through a curtain and be obsequious. But Pullman porters can and do.

"No," I snapped. "It rang itself. What in thunder do you mean by exchanging my valise for this one? You'll

have to find it if you waken the entire car to do it. There are important papers in that grip."

"Porter," called a feminine voice from an upper berth nearby. "Porter, am I to dangle here all day?"

The porter frowned. Then he looked at me with injured dignity. "I brought in your overcoat, sir. You carried

The fellow was right! In an excess of caution I had refused to relinquish my alligator bag, and had turned

over my other traps to the porter. It was clear enough then. I was simply a victim of the usual sleepingcar

robbery. I was in a lather of perspiration by that time: the lady down the car was still dangling and talking

about it: still nearer a feminine voice was giving quick orders in French, presumably to a maid. The porter

"Not there, sir," he said, dusting his knees. He was visibly more cheerful, having been absolved of

responsibility. "Reckon it was taken while you was wanderin' around the car last night."

"I'll give you fifty dollars if you find it," I said. "A hundred. Reach up my shoes and I'll "

I stopped abruptly. My eyes were fixed in stupefied amazement on a coat that hung from a hook at the foot of

my berth. From the coat they traveled, dazed, to the softbosomed shirt beside it, and from there to the collar

"A hundred!" the porter repeated, showing his teeth. But I caught him by the arm and pointed to the foot of

"Gray!" I could not believe even his corroboration of my own eyes. "But my clothes were blue!" The porter

was amused: he dived under the curtains and brought up a pair of shoes. "Your shoes, sir," he said with a

Now, there are two things I always avoid in my dress possibly an idiosyncrasy of my bachelor existence.

These tabooed articles are red neckties and tan shoes. And not only were the shoes the porter lifted from the

floor of a gorgeous shade of yellow, but the scarf which was run through the turned over collar was a gaudy

red. It took a full minute for the real import of things to penetrate my dazed intelligence. Then I gave a

"They're not mine, any of them," I snarled. "They are some other fellow's. I'll sit here until I take root before I

"They're nice lookin' clothes," the porter put in, eying the red tie with appreciation. "Ain't everybody would

"Call the conductor," I said shortly. Then a possible explanation occurred to me. "Oh, porter what's the

"Seven!" In my relief I almost shouted it. "Why, then, it's simple enough. I'm in the wrong berth, that's all.

"Likely in nine, sir." The darky was enjoying himself. "You and the other gentleman just got mixed in the

I drew a long breath. Of course, that was the explanation. This was number seven's berth, that was his soft

hat, this his umbrella, his coat, his bag. My rage turned to irritation at myself.

The porter went to the next berth and I could hear his softly insinuating voice. "Time to get up, sir. Are you

There was no response from number nine. I guessed that he had opened the curtains and was looking in. Then

"Empty! Do you mean my clothes aren't there?" I demanded. "My valise? Why don't you answer me?"

"You doan' give me time," he retorted. "There ain't nothin' there. But it's been slept in."

The disappointment was the greater for my few moments of hope. I sat up in a white fury and put on the

clothes that had been left me. Then, still raging, I sat on the edge of the berth and put on the obnoxious tan

shoes. The porter, called to his duties, made little excursions back to me, to offer assistance and to chuckle at

my discomfiture. He stood by, outwardly decorous, but with little irritating grins of amusement around his

"Bet the owner of those clothes didn't become them any more than you do," he said, as he plied the

"When I get the owner of these clothes," I retorted grimly, "he will need a shroud. Where's the conductor?"

The conductor was coming, he assured me; also that there was no bag answering the description of mine on

the car. I slammed my way to the dressingroom, washed, choked my fifteen and a half neck into a fifteen

collar, and was back again in less than five minutes. The car, as well as its occupants, was gradually taking on

a daylight appearance. I hobbled in, for one of the shoes was abominably tight, and found myself facing a

young woman in blue with an unforgettable face. ("Three women already." McKnight says: "That's going

some, even if you don't count the Gilmore nurse.") She stood, halfturned toward me, one hand idly

drooping, the other steadying her as she gazed out at the flying landscape. I had an instant impression that I

had met her somewhere, under different circumstances, more cheerful ones, I thought, for the girl's dejection

now was evident. Beside her, sitting down, a small dark woman, considerably older, was talking in a rapid

undertone. The girl nodded indifferently now and then. I fancied, although I was not sure, that my appearance

brought a startled look into the young woman's face. I sat down and, hands thrust deep into the other man's

The stage was set. In a moment the curtain was going up on the first act of the play. And for a while we

would all say our little speeches and sing our little songs, and I, the villain, would hold center stage while the

The porter was standing beside lower ten. He had reached in and was knocking valiantly. But his efforts met

with no response. He winked at me over his shoulder; then he unfastened the curtains and bent forward.

Behind him, I saw him stiffen, heard his muttered exclamation, saw the bluish pallor that spread over his face

The man in it was on his back, the early morning sun striking full on his upturned face. But the light did not

disturb him. A small stain of red dyed the front of his night clothes and trailed across the sheet; his halfopen

I grasped the porter's shaking shoulders and stared down to where the train imparted to the body a grisly

Afterwards, when I tried to recall our discovery of the body in lower ten, I found that my most vivid

impression was not that made by the revelation of the opened curtain. I had an instantaneous picture of a

slender bluegowned girl who seemed to sense my words rather than hear them, of two small hands that

clutched desperately at the seat beside them. The girl in the aisle stood, bent toward us, perplexity and alarm

With twitching hands the porter attempted to draw the curtains together. Then in a paralysis of shock, he

collapsed on the edge of my berth and sat there swaying. In my excitement I shook him.

"For Heaven's sake, keep your nerve, man," I said bruskly. "You'll have every woman in the car in hysterics.

And if you do, you'll wish you could change places with the man in there." He rolled his eyes.

A man near, who had been reading last night's paper, dropped it quickly and tiptoed toward us. He peered

between the partly open curtains, closed them quietly and went back, ostentatiously solemn, to his seat. The

very crackle with which he opened his paper added to the bursting curiosity of the car. For the passengers

With the curtains closed the porter was more himself; he wiped his lips with a handkerchief and stood erect.

"It's my last trip in this car," he remarked heavily. "There's something wrong with that berth. Last trip the

woman in it took an overdose of some sleeping stuff, and we found her, jes' like that, dead! And it ain't

more'n three months now since there was twins born in that very spot. No, sir, it ain't natural."

At that moment a thin man with prominent eyes and a spare grayish goatee creaked up the aisle and paused

"Porter sick?" he inquired, taking in with a professional eye the porter's horrorstruck face, my own

excitement and the slightly gaping curtains of lower ten. He reached for the darky's pulse and pulled out an

"Yes," I answered for the porter. "We've both had one. If you are a doctor, I wish you would look at the man

in the berth across, lower ten. I'm afraid it's too late, but I'm not experienced in such matters."

Together we opened the curtains, and the doctor, bending down, gave a comprehensive glance that took in the

rolling head, the relaxed jaw, the ugly stain on the sheet. The examination needed only a moment. Death was

written in the clear white of the nostrils, the colorless lips, the smoothing away of the sinister lines of the

night before. With its new dignity the face was not unhandsome: the gray hair was still plentiful, the features

The doctor straightened himself and turned to me. "Dead for some time," he said, running a professional

finger over the stains. "These are dry and darkened, you see, and rigor mortis is well established. A friend of

"No, he was not that is, I don't know anything about him," I corrected myself. It was my first blunder: the

doctor glanced up at me quickly and then turned his attention again to the body. Like a flash there had come

to me the vision of the woman with the bronze hair and the tragic face, whom I had surprised in the vestibule

between the cars, somewhere in the small hours of the morning. I had acted on my first impulse the

The doctor had unfastened the coat of the striped pajamas and exposed the dead man's chest. On the left side

"Very neatly done," the doctor said with appreciation. "Couldn't have done it better myself. Right through the

"Isn't the heart around there somewhere?" I asked. The medical man turned toward me and smiled austerely.

"That's where it belongs, just under that puncture, when it isn't gadding around in a man's throat or his boots."

I had a new respect for the doctor, for any one indeed who could crack even a feeble joke under such

circumstances, or who could run an impersonal finger over that wound and those stains. Odd how a healthy,

normal man holds the medical profession in half contemptuous regard until he gets sick, or an emergency like

this arises, and then turns meekly to the man who knows the ins and outs of his mortal tenement, takes his

He stood erect, after drawing the bedclothing over the face, and, taking off his glasses, he wiped them

Of course, I had expected that, but the word itself brought a shiver. I was just a bit dizzy. Curious faces

through the car were turned toward us, and I could hear the porter behind me breathing audibly. A stout

woman in negligee came down the aisle and querulously confronted the porter. She wore a pink

"Porter," she began, in the voice of the lady who had "dangled," "is there a rule of this company that will

allow a woman to occupy the dressingroom for one hour and curl her hair with an alcohol lamp while

She stopped suddenly and stared into lower ten. Her shining pink cheeks grew pasty, her jaw fell. I remember

trying to think of something to say, and of saying nothing at all. Then she had buried her eyes in the

nondescript garments that hung from her arm and tottered back the way she had come. Slowly a little knot of

men gathered around us, silent for the most part. The doctor was making a search of the berth when the

conductor elbowed his way through, followed by the inquisitive man, who had evidently summoned him. I

"Do it himself?" the conductor queried, after a businesslike glance at the body.

"No, he didn't," the doctor asserted. "There's no weapon here, and the window is closed. He couldn't have

thrown it out, and he didn't swallow it. What on earth are you looking for, man?"

Some one was on the floor at our feet, face down, head peering under the berth. Now he got up without

apology, revealing the man who had summoned the conductor. He was dusty, alert, cheerful, and he dragged

up with him the dead man's suitcase. The sight of it brought back to me at once my own predicament.

"I don't know whether there's any connection or not, conductor," I said, "but I am a victim, too, in less degree;

I've been robbed of everything I possess, except a red and yellow bathrobe. I happened to be wearing the

There was a fresh murmur in the crowd. Some body laughed nervously. The conductor was irritated.

"I can't bother with that now," he snarled. "The railroad company is responsible for transportation, not for

clothes, jewelry and morals. If people want to be stabbed and robbed in the company's cars, it's their affair.

I took an angry step forward. Then somebody touched my arm, and I unclenched my fist. I could understand

the conductor's position, and beside, in the law, I had been guilty myself of contributory negligence.

"I'm not trying to make you responsible," I protested as amiably as I could, "and I believe the clothes the thief

left are as good as my own. They are certainly newer. But my valise contained valuable papers and it is to

"Why, of course," the conductor said shrewdly. "Find the man who skipped out with this gentleman's clothes,

"I went to bed in lower nine," I said, my mind full again of my lost papers, "and I wakened in number seven.

I was up in the night prowling around, as I was unable to sleep, and I must have gone back to the wrong

berth. Anyhow, until the porter wakened me this morning I knew nothing of my mistake. In the interval the

thief murderer, too, perhaps must have come back, discovered my error, and taken advantage of it to

"Did any one on the train suspect you of having valuable papers?" he inquired. The crowd was listening

"No one," I answered promptly and positively. The doctor was investigating the murdered man's effects. The

pockets of his trousers contained the usual miscellany of keys and small change, while in his hip pocket was

found a small pearlhandled revolver of the type women usually keep around. A gold watch with a Masonic

charm had slid down between the mattress and the window, while a showy diamond stud was still fastened in

the bosom of his shirt. Taken as a whole, the personal belongings were those of a man of some means, but

"Either robbery was not the motive," he reflected, "or the thief overlooked these things in his hurry."

The latter hypothesis seemed the more tenable, when, after a thorough search, we found no pocketbook and

The suitcase gave no clue. It contained one empty leathercovered flask and a pint bottle, also empty, a

change of linen and some collars with the laundry mark, S. H. In the leather tag on the handle was a card with

the name Simon Harrington, Pittsburg. The conductor sat down on my unmade berth, across, and made an

entry of the name and address. Then, on an old envelope, he wrote a few words and gave it to the porter, who

"I guess that's all I can do," he said. "I've had enough trouble this trip to last for a year. They don't need a

conductor on these trains any more; what they ought to have is a sheriff and a posse."

The porter from the next car came in and whispered to him. The conductor rose unhappily.

"Next car's caught the disease," he grumbled. "Doctor, a woman back there has got mumps or bubonic

"Lady about the middle of the car," he said, "in black, sir, with queerlooking hair sort of copper color, I

With the departure of the conductor and the doctor, the group around lower ten broke up, to reform in

smaller knots through the car. The porter remained on guard. With something of relief I sank into a seat. I

wanted to think, to try to remember the details of the previous night. But my inquisitive acquaintance had

other intentions. He came up and sat down beside me. Like the conductor, he had taken notes of the dead

man's belongings, his name, address, clothing and the general circumstances of the crime. Now with his little

notebook open before him, he prepared to enjoy the minor sensation of the robbery.

"And now for the second victim," he began cheerfully. "What is your name and address, please?" I eyed him

"I have lost everything but my name and address," I parried. "What do you want them for? Publication?"

"Oh, no; dear, no!" he said, shocked at my misapprehension. "Merely for my own enlightenment. I like to

gather data of this kind and draw my own conclusions. Most interesting and engrossing. Once or twice I have

forestalled the results of police investigation but entirely for my own amusement."

I nodded tolerantly. Most of us have hobbies; I knew a man once who carried his handkerchief up his sleeve

"I use that inductive method originated by Poe and followed since with such success by Conan Doyle. Have

you ever read Gaboriau? Ah, you have missed a treat, indeed. And now, to get down to business, what is the

"How on earth do I know?" I demanded impatiently. "He didn't write it in blood anywhere, did he?"

"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that the pockets of those clothes are entirely empty?" The pockets! In the

excitement I had forgotten entirely the sealskin grip which the porter now sat at my feet, and I had not

investigated the pockets at all. With the inquisitive man's pencil taking note of everything that I found, I

Upper lefthand waistcoat, two lead pencils and a fountain pen; lower right waistcoat, matchbox and a

small stamp book; righthand pocket coat, pair of gray suede gloves, new, size seven and a half; lefthand

pocket, gunmetal cigarette case studded with pearls, halffull of Egyptian cigarettes. The trousers pockets

contained a gold penknife, a small amount of money in bills and change, and a handkerchief with the initial

Further search through the coat discovered a cardcase with cards bearing the name Henry Pinckney

Sullivan, and a leather flask with gold mountings, filled with what seemed to be very fair whisky, and

"His name evidently is Henry Pinckney Sullivan," said the cheerful follower of Poe, as he wrote it down.

"Address as yet unknown. Blond, probably. Have you noticed that it is almost always the blond men who

affect a very light gray, with a touch of red in the scarf? Fact, I assure you. I kept a record once of the

summer attire of men, and ninety per cent, followed my rule. Dark men like you affect navy blue, or brown."

"Yes; the suit he took was dark a blue," I said. He rubbed his hands and smiled at me delightedly. "Then

you wore black shoes, not tan," he said, with a glance at the aggressive yellow ones I wore.

"Right again," I acknowledged. "Black low shoes and black embroidered hose. If you keep on you'll have a

motive for the crime, and the murderer's present place of hiding. And if you come back to the smoker with

I put the articles from the pockets back again and got up. "I wonder if there is a diner on?" I said. "I need

I was conscious then of some one at my elbow. I turned to see the young woman whose face was so vaguely

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said hurriedly, "I thought you were some one else." She was looking in a

puzzled fashion at my coat. I felt all the cringing guilt of a man who has accidentally picked up the wrong

"I'm sorry," I said idiotically. "I'm sorry, but I'm not." I have learned since that she has bright brown hair,

with a loose wave in it that drops over her ears, and dark blue eyes with black lashes and but what does it

She saw the flask then, and her errand came back to her. "One of the ladies at the end of car has fainted," she

I picked up the flask at once and followed my guide down the aisle. Two or three women were working over

the woman who had fainted. They had opened her collar and taken out her hairpins, whatever good that might

do. The stout woman was vigorously rubbing her wrists, with the idea, no doubt, of working up her pulse!

The unconscious woman was the one for whom I had secured lower eleven at the station.

I poured a little liquor in a bungling masculine fashion between her lips as she leaned back, with closed eyes.

"Poor thing," said the stout lady. "As she lies back that way I could almost think it was my mother; she used

"It would make anybody faint," chimed in another. "Murder and robbery in one night and on one car. I'm

thankful I always wear my rings in a bag around my neck even if they do get under me and keep me

The girl in blue was looking at us with wide, startled eyes. I saw her pale a little, saw the quick, apprehensive

glance which she threw at her traveling companion, the small woman I had noticed before. There was an

exchange almost a clash of glances. The small woman frowned. That was all. I turned my attention again

She had revived somewhat, and now she asked to have the window opened. The train had stopped again and

the car was oppressively hot. People around were looking at their watches and grumbling over the delay. The

doctor bustled in with a remark about its being his busy day. The amateur detective and the porter together

mounted guard over lower ten. Outside the heat rose in shimmering waves from the tracks: the very wood of

the car was hot to touch. A Camberwell Beauty darted through the open door and made its way, in erratic

plunges, great wings waving, down the sunny aisle. All around lay the peace of harvested fields, the quiet of

I was growing more and more irritable. The thought of what the loss of the notes meant was fast crowding the

The porter had reported no bag answering the description of mine on the train, but I was disposed to make my

own investigation. I made a tour of the cars, scrutinizing every variety of hand luggage, ranging from

luxurious English bags with gold mountings to the wicker nondescripts of the day coach at the rear. I was not

alone in my quest, for the girl in blue was just ahead of me. Car by car she preceded me through the train,

unconscious that I was behind her, looking at each passenger as she passed. I fancied the proceeding was

distasteful, but that she had determined on a course and was carrying it through. We reached the end of the

The girl went out to the platform. When she saw me she moved aside, and I stepped out beside her. Behind us

the track curved sharply; the early sunshine threw the train, in long black shadow, over the hot earth. Forward

somewhere they were hammering. The girl said nothing, but her profile was strained and anxious.

"I if you have lost anything," I began, "I wish you would let me try to help. Not that my own success is

She hardly glanced at me. It was not flattering. "I have not been robbed, if that is what you mean," she replied

There was nothing to say to that. I lifted my hat the other fellow's hat and turned to go back to my car.

Two or three members of the train crew, including the conductor, were standing in the shadow talking. And at

that moment, from a farmhouse near came the swift clang of the breakfast bell, calling in the hands from

"We may be here for an hour," I said, "and there is no buffet car on. If I remember my youth, that bell means

"I am not hungry," she said, "but perhaps a cup of coffee dear me, I believe I am hungry," she finished.

"I can bring your companion," I suggested, without enthusiasm. But the young woman shook her head.

"She is not hungry," she objected, "and she is very well, I know she wouldn't come. Do you suppose we

"I haven't any idea," I said cheerfully. "Any old train would be better than this one, if it does leave us

"Yes. Any train would be better than this one," she repeated gravely. I found myself watching her changing

expression. I had spoken two dozen words to her and already I felt that I knew the lights and shades in her

voice, I, who had always known how a woman rode to hounds, and who never could have told the color of

I stepped down on the ties and turned to assist her, and together we walked back to where the conductor and

the porter from our car were in close conversation. Instinctively my hand went to my cigarette pocket and

"If you want to smoke, you may," she said. "I have a big cousin who smokes all the time. He says I am

I drew out the gunmetal cigarette case and opened it. But this most commonplace action had an

extraordinary result: the girl beside me stopped dead still and stood staring at it with fascinated eyes.

"Is where did you get that?" she demanded, with a catch in her voice; her gaze still fixed on the cigarette

"Then you haven't heard the rest of the tragedy?" I asked, holding out the case. "It's frightfully bad luck for

At that moment the conductor and porter ceased their colloquy. The conductor came directly toward me,

"I would like to talk to you in the car," he said to me, with a curious glance at the young lady.

"Can't it wait?" I objected. "We are on our way to a cup of coffee and a slice of bacon. Be merciful, as you

"I'm afraid the breakfast will have to wait," he replied. "I won't keep you long." There was a note of authority

"We'll have to defer that cup of coffee for a while," I said to the girl; "but don't despair; there's breakfast

As we entered the car, she stood aside, but I felt rather than saw that she followed us. I was surprised to see a

half dozen men gathered around the berth in which I had wakened, number seven. It had not yet been made

As we passed along the aisle, I was conscious of a new expression on the faces of the passengers. The tall

woman who had fainted was searching my face with narrowed eyes, while the stout woman of the kindly

As we pushed our way through the group, I fancied that it closed around me ominously. The conductor said

"What's the matter?" I inquired. I was puzzled, but not apprehensive. "Have you some of my things? I'd be

Nobody spoke, and I fell silent, too. For one of the pillows had been turned over, and the under side of the

white case was streaked with brownish stains. I think it was a perceptible time before I realized that the stains

"Why, it that looks like blood," I said vacuously. There was an incessant pounding in my ears, and the

I looked around with a dizzy attempt at nonchalance. "Even if it is," I remonstrated, "surely you don't suppose

The amateur detective elbowed his way in. He had a scrap of transparent paper in his hand, and a pencil.

"I would like permission to trace the stains," he began eagerly. "Also" to me "if you will kindly jab your

"If you don't keep out of this," the conductor said savagely, "I will do some jabbing myself. As for you, sir

" he turned to me. I was absolutely innocent, but I knew that I presented a typical picture of guilt; I was

covered with cold sweat, and the pounding in my ears kept up dizzily. "As for you, sir "

The irrepressible amateur detective made a quick pounce at the pillow and pushed back the cover. Before our

incredulous eyes he drew out a narrow steel dirk which had been buried to the small cross that served as a

There was a chorus of voices around, a quick surging forward of the crowd. So that was what had scratched

"Well," I said, trying to speak naturally, "doesn't that prove what I have been telling you? The man who

committed the murder belonged to this berth, and made an exchange in some way after the crime. How do

you know he didn't change the tags so I would come back to this berth?" This was an inspiration; I was

There was a murmur of assent around. The doctor, who was standing beside me, put his hand on my arm. "If

this gentleman committed this crime, and I for one feel sure he did not, then who is the fellow who got away?

"We have only one man's word for that," the conductor snarled. "I've traveled some in these cars myself, and

Somebody on the edge of the group asserted that hereafter he would travel by daylight. I glanced up and

"They are all mad," she said. Her tone was low, but I heard her distinctly. "Don't take them seriously enough

"I am glad you think I didn't do it," I observed meekly, over the crowd. "Nothing else is of any importance.

The conductor had pulled out his notebook again. "Your name, please," he said gruffly.

"Mr. Blakeley, you say you have occupied the wrong berth and have been robbed. Do you know anything of

"They fit you," he said with quick suspicion. "Isn't that rather a coincidence? You are a large man."

"Good Heavens," I retorted, stung into fury, "do I look like a man who would wear this kind of a necktie? Do

you suppose I carry purple and green barred silk handkerchiefs? Would any man in his senses wear a pair of

The conductor was inclined to hedge. "You will have to grant that I am in a peculiar position," he said. "I

have only your word as to the exchange of berths, and you understand I am merely doing my duty. Are there

For the second time I emptied them of their contents, which he noted. "Is that all?" he finished. "There was

"That's not all, sir," broke in the porter, stepping forward. "There was a small black satchel."

The easily swayed crowd looked suspicious again. I've grown so accustomed to reading the faces of a jury,

seeing them swing from doubt to belief, and back again to doubt, that I instinctively watch expressions. I saw

The bag was found a couple of seats away, under somebody's raincoat another dubious circumstance. Was I

hiding it? It was brought to the berth and placed beside the conductor, who opened it at once.

It contained the usual traveling impedimenta change of linen, collars, handkerchiefs, a bronzegreen scarf,

and a safety razor. But the attention of the crowd riveted itself on a flat, Russia leather wallet, around which a

heavy gum band was wrapped, and which bore in gilt letters the name "Simon Harrington."

"Is this another coincidence?" he asked. "Did the man who left you his clothes and the barred silk

The men standing around had drawn off a little, and I saw the absolute futility of any remonstrance. Have you

ever seen a fly, who, in these hygienic days, finding no cobwebs to entangle him, is caught in a sheet of fly

paper, finds himself more and more mired, and is finally quiet with the sticky stillness of despair?

Well, I was the fly. I had seen too much of circumstantial evidence to have any belief that the establishing of

my identity would weigh much against the other incriminating details. It meant imprisonment and trial,

probably, with all the notoriety and loss of practice they would entail. A man thinks quickly at a time like

that. All the probable consequences of the finding of that pocketbook flashed through my mind as I

"I don't want it," I said. "Look inside. Maybe the other man took the money and left the wallet."

The conductor opened it, and again there was a curious surging forward of the crowd. To my intense

I stood blankly miserable while it was counted out five onehundreddollar bills, six twenties, and some

The little man with the notebook insisted on taking the numbers of the notes, to the conductor's annoyance.

It was immaterial to me: small things had lost their power to irritate. I was seeing myself in the prisoner's

box, going through all the nerveracking routine of a trial for murder the challenging of the jury, the

endless crossexaminations, the alternate hope and fear. I believe I said before that I had no nerves, but for a

I folded my arms and gave myself a mental shake. I seemed to be the center of a hundred eyes, expressing

every shade of doubt and distrust, but I tried not to flinch. Then some one created a diversion.

The amateur detective was busy again with the sealskin bag, investigating the make of the safety razor and

the manufacturer's name on the bronzegreen tie. Now, however, he paused and frowned, as though some pet

Then from a corner of the bag he drew out and held up for our inspection some three inches of fine gold

The conductor held out his hand for it, but the little man was not ready to give it up. He turned to me.

"No chain at all," I said sulkily. "No jewelry of any kind, except plain gold buttons in the shirt I am wearing."

"Where are your glasses?" he threw at me suddenly: instinctively my hand went to my eyes. My glasses had

been gone all morning, and I had not even noticed their absence. The little man smiled cynically and held out

"I must ask you to examine this," he insisted. "Isn't it a part of the fine gold chain you wear over your ear?"

I didn't want to touch the thing: the stain at the end made me shudder. But with a baker's dozen of suspicious

eyes well, we'll say fourteen: there were no oneeyed men I took the fragment in the tips of my fingers

"Very fine chains are much alike," I managed to say. "For all I know, this may be mine, but I don't know how

it got into that sealskin bag. I never saw the bag until this morning after daylight."

"He admits that he had the bag," somebody said behind me. "How did you guess that he wore glasses,

That gentleman cleared his throat. "There were two reasons," he said, "for suspecting it. When you see a man

with the lines of his face drooping, a healthy individual with a pensive eye, suspect astigmatism. Besides,

this gentleman has a pronounced line across the bridge of his nose and a mark on his ear from the chain."

After this remarkable exhibition of the theoretical as combined with the practical, he sank into a seat nearby,

and still holding the chain, sat with closed eyes and pursed lips. It was evident to all the car that the solution

of the mystery was a question of moments. Once he bent forward eagerly and putting the chain on the

windowsill, proceeded to go over it with a pocket magnifying glass, only to shake his head in

disappointment. All the people around shook their heads too, although they had not the slightest idea what it

The pounding in my ears began again. The group around me seemed to be suddenly motionless in the very

act of moving, as if a hypnotist had called "Rigid!" The girl in blue was looking at me, and above the din I

thought she said she must speak to me something vital. The pounding grew louder and merged into a

scream. With a grinding and splintering the car rose under my feet. Then it fell away into darkness.

Have you ever been picked up out of your threemealsaday life, whirled around in a tornado of events, and

landed in a situation so grotesque and yet so horrible that you laugh even while you are groaning, and

straining at its hopelessness? McKnight says that is hysteria, and that no man worthy of the name ever admits

Also, as McKnight says, it sounds like a tank drama. Just as the revolving saw is about to cut the hero into

stove lengths. the second villain blows up the sawmill. The hero goes up through the roof and alights on the

Nevertheless, when I was safely home again, with Mrs. Klopton brewing strange drinks that came in paper

packets from the pharmacy, and that smelled to heaven, I remember staggering to the door and closing it, and

then going back to bed and howling out the absurdity and the madness of the whole thing. And while I

laughed my very soul was sick, for the girl was gone by that time, and I knew by all the loyalty that answers

And yet, all the night that followed, filled as it was with the shrieking demons of pain, I saw her as I had seen

her last, in the queer hat with green ribbons. I told the doctor this, guardedly, the next morning, and he said it

was the morphia, and that I was lucky not to have seen a row of devils with green tails.

I don't know anything about the wreck of September ninth last. You who swallowed the details with your

coffee and digested the horrors with your chop, probably know a great deal more than I do. I remember very

distinctly that the jumping and throbbing in my arm brought me back to a world that at first was nothing but

sky, a heap of clouds that I thought hazily were the meringue on a blue charlotte russe. As the sense of

hearing was slowly added to vision, I heard a woman near me sobbing that she had lost her hat pin, and she

I think I dropped back into unconsciousness again, for the next thing I remember was of my blue patch of sky

clouded with smoke, of a strange roaring and crackling, of a rain of fiery sparks on my face and of somebody

beating at me with feeble hands. I opened my eyes and closed them again: the girl in blue was bending over

me. With that imperviousness to big things and keenness to small that is the first effect of shock, I tried to be

"You will have to rouse yourself!" the girl was repeating desperately. "You've been on fire twice already." A

piece of striped ticking floated slowly over my head. As the wind caught it its charring edges leaped into

"Looks like a kite, doesn't it?" I remarked cheerfully. And then, as my arm gave an excruciating throb

The girl bent over and spoke slowly, distinctly, as one might speak to a deaf person or a child.

"Listen, Mr. Blakeley," she said earnestly. "You must rouse yourself. There has been a terrible accident. The

second section ran into us. The wreck is burning now, and if we don't move, we will catch fire. Do you hear?"

Her voice and my arm were bringing me to my senses. "I hear," I said. "I I'll sit up in a second. Are you

"They seem to move all right," I remarked dubiously. "Would you mind telling me where the back of my

She made a quick examination. "It's pretty badly bumped," she said. "You must have fallen on it."

I had got up on my uninjured elbow by that time, but the pain threw me back. "Don't look at the wreck," I

entreated her. "It's no sight for a woman. If if there is any way to tie up this arm, I might be able to do

"Then it is too late to help," she replied solemnly. A little shower of feathers, each carrying its fiery lamp,

blew over us from some burning pillow. A part the wreck collapsed with a crash. In a resolute to play a man's

part in the tragedy going on around, I got to my knees. Then I realized what had not noticed before: the hand

and wrist of the broken left arm were jammed through the handle of the sealskin grip. I gasped and sat down

"You must not do that," the girl insisted. I noticed now that she kept her back to the wreck, her eyes averted.

"The weight of the travelingbag must be agony. Let me support the valise until we get back a few yards.

"Will it have to be cut off?" I asked as calmly as possible. There were redhot stabs of agony clear to my

"Yes," she replied, with dumfounding coolness. "If I had a knife I could do it myself. You might sit here and

By that time my returning faculties had realized that she was going to cut off the satchel, not the arm. The

"If you pull, it might come," I suggested. "And with that weight gone, I think I will cease to be five feet

She tried gently to loosen the handle, but it would not move, and at last, with great drops of cold perspiration

"I'm afraid I can't stand it," I said. "But there's a knife somewhere around these clothes, and if I can find it,

As I gave her the knife she turned it over, examining it with a peculiar expression, bewilderment rather than

surprise. But she said nothing. She set to work deftly, and in a few minutes the bag dropped free.

"That's better," I declared, sitting up. "Now, if you can pin my sleeve to my coat, it will support the arm so

"The pin might give," she objected, "and the jerk would be terrible." She looked around, puzzled; then she got

up, coming back in a minute with a draggled, partly scorched sheet. This she tore into a large square, and

after she had folded it, she slipped it under the broken arm and tied it securely at the back of my neck.

The relief was immediate, and, picking up the sealskin bag, I walked slowly beside her, away from the track.

We were still dazed, I think, for we wandered like two troubled children, our one idea at first to get as far

away as we could from the horror behind us. We were both bareheaded, grimy, pallid through the grit. Now

and then we met little groups of country folk hurrying to the track: they stared at us curiously, and some

wished to question us. But we hurried past them; we had put the wreck behind us. That way lay madness.

Only once the girl turned and looked behind her. The wreck was hidden, but the smoke cloud hung heavy and

dense. For the first time I remembered that my companion had not been alone on the train.

"It is quiet here," I suggested. "If you will sit down on the bank I will go back and make some inquiries. I've

She interrupted me, and something of her splendid poise was gone. "Please don't go back," she said. "I am

Heaven knows I did not want her to be alone. I was more than content to walk along beside her aimlessly, for

any length of time. Gradually, as she lost the exaltation of the moment, I was gaining my normal condition of

mind. I was beginning to realize that I had lacked the morning grace of a shave, that I looked like some lost

hope of yesterday, and that my left shoe pinched outrageously. A man does not rise triumphant above such

handicaps. The girl, for all her disordered hair and the crumpled linen of her waist, in spite of her missing hat

and the small gold bag that hung forlornly from a broken chain, looked exceedingly lovely.

"Then I won't leave you alone," I said manfully, and we stumbled on together. Thus far we had seen nobody

from the wreck, but well up the lane we came across the tall dark woman who had occupied lower eleven.

She was half crouching beside the road, her black hair about her shoulders, and an ugly bruise over her eye.

She did not seem to know us, and refused to accompany us. We left her there at last, babbling incoherently

The girl shuddered as we went on. Once she turned and glanced at my bandage. "Does it hurt very much?"

"It's growing rather numb. But it might be worse," I answered mendaciously. If anything in this world could

And so we trudged on bareheaded under the summer sun, growing parched and dusty and weary, doggedly

leaving behind us the pillar of smoke. I thought I knew of a trolley line somewhere in the direction we were

going, or perhaps we could find a horse and trap to take us into Baltimore. The girl smiled when I suggested

"We will create a sensation, won't we?" she asked. "Isn't it queer or perhaps it's my state of mind but I keep

When we reached the main road we sat down for a moment, and her hair, which had been coming loose for

some time, fell over her shoulders in little waves that were most alluring. It seemed a pity to twist it up again,

but when I suggested this, cautiously, she said it was troublesome and got in her eyes when it was loose. So

she gathered it up, while I held a row of little shell combs and pins, and when it was done it was vastly

becoming, too. Funny about hair: a man never knows he has it until he begins to lose it, but it's different with

a girl. Something of the unconventional situation began to dawn on her as she put in the last hairpin and

"I have not told you my name," she said abruptly. "I forgot that because I know who you are, you know

So that was it! This was the girl of the photograph on John Gilmore's bedside table. The girl McKnight

expected to see in Richmond the next day, Sunday! She was on her way back to meet him! Well, what

difference did it make, anyhow? We had been thrown together by the merest chance. In an hour or two at the

most we would be back in civilization and she would recall me, if she remembered me at all, as an unshaven

creature in a red cravat and tan shoes, with a soiled Pullman sheet tied around my neck. I drew a deep breath.

"Just a twinge," I said, when she glanced up quickly. "It's very good of you to let me know, Miss West. I have

"Yes. From Richey McKnight," I assented. Was it any wonder McKnight was crazy about her? I dug my

"I have been visiting near Cresson, in the mountains," Miss West was saying. "The person you mentioned,

Mrs. Curtis, was my hostess. We we were on our way to Washington together." She spoke slowly, as if she

wished to give the minimum of explanation. Across her face had come again the baffling expression of

"You were on your way home, I suppose? Richey spoke about seeing you," I floundered, finding it necessary

"No," she returned quietly. "I did not intend to go home. I well, it doesn't matter; I am going home now."

A woman in a calico dress, with two children, each an exact duplicate of the other, had come quickly down

the road. She took in the situation at a glance, and was explosively hospitable.

"You poor things," she said. "If you'll take the first road to the left over there, and turn in at the second pigsty,

you will find breakfast on the table and a coffeepot on the stove. And there's plenty of soap and water, too.

We accepted the invitation and she hurried on toward the excitement and the railroad. I got up carefully and

"At the second pigsty to the left," I repeated, "we will find the breakfast I promised you seven eternities ago.

We said very little for the remainder of that walk. I had almost reached the limit of endurance: with every

step the broken ends of the bone grated together. We found the farmhouse without difficulty, and I

remember wondering if I could hold out to the end of the old stone walk that led between hedges to the door.

"Allah be praised," I said with all the voice I could muster. "Behold the coffeepot!" And then I put down the

When I came around something hot was trickling down my neck, and a despairing voice was saying, "Oh, I

"But I don't want it in my eyes," I replied dreamily. "I haven't any idea what came over me. It was the shoes, I

think: the left one is a redhot torture." I was sitting by that time and looking across into her face.

Never before or since have I fainted, but I would do it joyfully, a dozen times a day, if I could waken again to

the blissful touch of soft fingers on my face, the hot ecstasy of coffee spilled by those fingers down my neck.

There was a thrill in every tone of her voice that morning. Before long my loyalty to McKnight would step

between me and the girl he loved: life would develop new complexities. In those early hours after the wreck,

full of pain as they were, there was nothing of the suspicion and distrust that came later. Shorn of our gauds

and baubles, we were primitive man and woman, together: our world for the hour was the deserted

farmhouse, the slope of wheatfield that led to the road, the woodland lot, the pasture.

We breakfasted together across the homely table. Our cheerfulness, at first sheer reaction, became less forced

as we ate great slices of bread from the granny oven back of the house, and drank hot fluid that smelled like

coffee and tasted like nothing that I have ever swallowed. We found cream in stone jars, sunk deep in the

chill water of the spring house. And there were eggs, great yellowbrown ones, a basket of them.

So, like two children awakened from a nightmare, we chattered over our food: we hunted mutual friends, we

laughed together at my feeble witticisms, but we put the horror behind us resolutely. After all, it was the hat

All along I had had the impression that Alison West was deliberately putting out of her mind something that

obtruded now and then. It brought with it a return of the puzzled expression that I had surprised early in the

day, before the wreck. I caught it once, when, breakfast over, she was tightening the sling that held the

broken arm. I had prolonged the morning meal as much as I could, but when the wooden clock with the pink

roses on the dial pointed to half after ten, and the mother with the duplicate youngsters had not come back,

"If we are to get into Baltimore at all we must start," she said, rising. "You ought to see a doctor as soon as

"Hush," I said warningly. "Don't mention the arm, please; it is asleep now. You may rouse it."

"If I only had a hat," she reflected. "It wouldn't need to be much of one, but " She gave a little cry and

darted to the corner. "Look," she said triumphantly, "the very thing. With the green streamers tied up in a

bow, like this do you suppose the child would mind? I can put five dollars or so here that would buy a

It was a queer affair of straw, that hat, with a round crown and a rim that flopped dismally. With a single

movement she had turned it up at one side and fitted it to her head. Grotesque by itself, when she wore it it

Evidently the lack of head covering had troubled her, for she was elated at her find. She left me, scrawling a

note of thanks and pinning it with a bill to the tablecloth, and ran upstairs to the mirror and the promised

I did not see her when she came down. I had discovered a bench with a tin basin outside the kitchen door, and

was washing, in a helpless, onesided way. I felt rather than saw that she was standing in the doorway, and I

"How is it possible for a man with only a right hand to wash his left ear?" I asked from the roller towel. I was

distinctly uncomfortable: men are more rigidly creatures of convention than women, whether they admit it or

not. "There is so much soap on me still that if I laugh I will blow bubbles. Washing with rainwater and

homemade soap is like motoring on a slippery road. I only struck the high places."

She was leaning against the frame of the door, her face perfectly colorless, her breath coming in slow,

difficult respirations. The erratic hat was pinned to place, but it had slid rakishly to one side. When I realized

that she was staring, not at me, but past me to the road along which we had come, I turned and followed her

gaze. There was no one in sight: the lane stretched dust white in the sun, no moving figure on it, no sign of

The surprising change in her held me speechless. All the animation of the breakfast table was gone: there was

no hint of the response with which, before, she had met my nonsensical sallies. She stood there,

whitelipped, unsmiling, staring down the dusty road. One hand was clenched tight over some small object.

Her eyes dropped to it from the distant road, and then closed, with a quick, indrawn breath. Her color came

back slowly. Whatever had caused the change, she said nothing. She was anxious to leave at once, almost

impatient over my deliberate masculine way of getting my things together. Afterward I recalled that I had

wanted to explore the barn for a horse and some sort of a vehicle to take us to the trolley, and that she had

refused to allow me to look. I remembered many things later that might have helped me, and did not. At the

time, I was only completely bewildered. Save the wreck, the responsibility for which lay between Providence

and the engineer of the second section, all the events of that strange morning were logically connected; they

came from one cause, and tended unerringly to one end. But the cause was buried, the end not yet in view.

Not until we had left the house well behind did the girl's face relax its tense lines. I was watching her more

closely than I had realized, for when we had gone a little way along the road she turned to me almost

petulantly. "Please don't stare so at me," she said, to my sudden confusion. "I know the hat is dreadful. Green

"Perhaps it was the green." I was unaccountably relieved. "Do you know, a few minutes ago, you looked

She glanced at me quickly, but I was gazing ahead. We were out of sight of the house, now, and with every

step away from it the girl was obviously relieved. Whatever she held in her hand, she never glanced at it. But

she was conscious of it every second. She seemed to come to a decision about it while we were still in sight

of the gate, for she murmured something and turned back alone, going swiftly, her feet stirring up small puffs

of dust at every step. She fastened something to the gatepost, I could see the nervous haste with which she

worked. When she joined me again it was without explanation. But the clenched fingers were free now, and

We walked along slowly in the general direction of the suburban trolley line. Once a man with an empty

wagon offered us a lift, but after a glance at the springless vehicle I declined.

"The ends of the bone think they are castanets as it is," I explained. "But the lady "

The young lady, however, declined and we went on together. Once, when the trolley line was in sight, she got

a pebble in her low shoe, and we sat down under a tree until she found the cause of the trouble.

"I I don't know what I should have done without you," I blundered. "Moral support and and all that. Do

you know, my first conscious thought after the wreck was of relief that you had not been hurt?"

She was sitting beside me, where a big chestnut tree shaded the road, and I surprised a look of misery on her

"And my first thought," she said slowly, "was regret that I that I hadn't been obliterated, blown out like a

But her lips were trembling, and because the little shams of society are forgotten at times like this, I leaned

"You must not say those things," I expostulated. "Perhaps, after all, your friends "

"I had no friends on the train." Her voice was hard again, her tone final. She drew her hand from under mine,

not quickly, but decisively. A car was in sight, coming toward us. The steel finger of civilization, of

propriety, of visiting cards and formal introductions was beckoning us in. Miss West put on her shoe.

We said little on the car. The few passengers stared at us frankly, and discussed the wreck, emphasizing its

horrors. The girl did not seem to hear. Once she turned to me with the quick, unexpected movement that was

"I do not wish my mother to know I was in the accident:," she said. "Will you please not tell Richey about

I gave my promise, of course. Again, when we were almost into Baltimore, she asked to examine the

gunmetal cigarette case, and sat silent with it in her hands, while I told of the early morning's events on the

"So you see," I finished, "this grip, everything I have on, belongs to a fellow named Sullivan. He probably

"And so you think he committed the the crime?" Her eyes; were on the cigarette case.

"Naturally," I said. "A man doesn't jump off a Pullman car in the middle of the night in another man's clothes,

unless he is trying to get away from something. Besides the dirk, there were the stains that you, saw. Why, I

have the murdered man's pocketbook in this valise at my feet. What does that look like?"

I colored when I saw the ghost of a smile hovering around the corners of her mouth. "That is," I finished, "if

The sustaining chain of her small gold bag gave way just then. She did not notice it. I picked it up and slid the

trinket into my pocket for safekeeping, where I promptly forgot it. Afterwards I wished I had let it lie

unnoticed on the floor of that dirty little suburban car, and even now, when I see a woman carelessly dangling

a similar feminine trinket, I shudder involuntarily: there comes back to me the memory of a girl's puzzled

eyes under the brim of a flopping hat, the haunting suspicion of the sleepless nights that followed.

Just then I was determined that my companion should not stray back to the wreck, and to that end I was

"Do you know that it is Sunday?" she asked suddenly, "and that we are actually ragged?"

"Never mind that," I retorted. "All Baltimore is divided on Sunday into three parts, those who rise up and go

to church, those who rise up and read the newspapers, and those who don't rise up. The first are somewhere

"You treat me like a child," she said almost pettishly. "Don't try so hard to be cheerful. It it is almost

After that I subsided like a pricked balloon, and the remainder of the ride was made in silence. The

information that she would go to friends in the city was a shock: it meant an earlier separation than I had

planned for. But my arm was beginning again. In putting her into a cab I struck it and gritted my teeth with

She leaned forward and held out her hand. "I may not have another chance to thank you," she said, "and I

think I would better not try, anyhow. I cannot tell you how grateful I am." I muttered something about the

gratitude being mine: owing to the knock I was seeing two cabs, and two girls were holding out two hands.

"Remember," they were both saying, "you have never met me, Mr. Blakeley. And if you ever hear anything

about me that is not pleasant, I want you to think the best you can of me. Will you?"

The two girls were one now, with little flashes of white light playing all around. "I I'm afraid that I shall

I had my arm done up temporarily in Baltimore and took the next train home. I was pretty far gone when I

stumbled out of a cab almost into the scandalized arms of Mrs. Klopton. In fifteen minutes I was in bed, with

that good woman piling on blankets and blistering me in unprotected places with hotwater bottles. And in an

I dropped asleep then, waking in the late twilight to a realization that I was at home again, without the papers

that meant conviction for Andy Bronson, with a charge of murder hanging over my head, and with something

more than an impression of the girl my best friend was in love with, a girl moreover who was almost as great

"And I'm no hand at guessing riddles," I groaned half aloud. Mrs. Klopton came over promptly and put a cold

"Euphemia," she said to some one outside the door, "telephone the doctor that he is still rambling, but that he

"There's nothing the matter with me, Mrs. Klopton," I rebelled. "I was only thinking out loud. Confound that

cloth: it's trickling all over me!" I gave it a fling, and heard it land with a soggy thud on the floor.

"Thinking out loud is delirium," Mrs. Klopton said imperturbably. "A fresh doth, Euphemia."

This time she held it on with a firm pressure that I was too weak to resist. I expostulated feebly that I was

drowning, which she also laid to my mental exaltation, and then I finally dropped into a damp sleep. It was

probably midnight when I roused again. I had been dreaming of the wreck, and it was inexpressibly

comforting to feel the stability of my bed, and to realize the equal stability of Mrs. Klopton, who sat, fully

"Does that book say anything about opening the windows on a hot night?" I suggested, when I had got my

She put it down immediately and came over to me. If there is one time when Mrs. Klopton is chastened and

it is the only time it is when she reads Science and Health. "I don't like to open the shutters, Mr. Lawrence,"

But, pressed further, she refused to explain. "The doctor said you were not to be excited," she persisted.

"Not a drop until you tell me," I said firmly. "Besides, you know very well there's nothing the matter with me.

This arm of mine is only a false belief." I sat up gingerly. "Now why don't you open that window?"

Mrs. Klopton succumbed. "Because there are queer goingson in that house next door," she said. "If you will

The queer goingson, however, proved to be slightly disappointing. It seemed that after I left on Friday night,

a light was seen flitting fitfully through the empty house next door. Euphemia had seen it first and called Mrs.

Klopton. Together they had watched it breathlessly until it disappeared on the lower floor.

"You should have been a writer of ghost stories," I said, giving my pillows a thump. "And so it was fitting

"That's what it was doing," she reiterated. "Fitting flitfully I mean flitting fitfully how you do throw me

"Oh, come now, Mrs. Klopton," I objected, "ghosts are like lightning; they never strike twice in the same

"You may ask Euphemia," she retorted with dignity. "Not more than an hour after, there was a light there

again. We saw it through the chinks of the shutters. Only this time it began at the lower floor and climbed!"

"You oughtn't to tell ghost stories at night," came McKnight's voice from the doorway. "Really, Mrs.

Klopton, I'm amazed at you. You old duffer! I've got you to thank for the worst day of my life."

Mrs. Klopton gulped. Then realizing that the "old duffer" was meant for me, she took her empty cup and

"The Pirate's crazy about me, isn't she?" McKnight said to the closing door. Then he swung around and held

"By Jove," he said, "I've been laying you out all day, lilies on the doorbell, black gloves, everything. If you

"I never even thought of it." I was filled with remorse. "Upon my word, Rich, I hadn't an idea beyond getting

McKnight stopped me. "Seen it! Why, you lunatic, I've been digging for you all day in the ruins! I've lunched

He had fished the key of the cellarette from its hidingplace in my shoe bag and was mixing himself what he

called a Bernard Shaw a foundation of brandy and soda, with a little of everything else in sight to give it

snap. Now that I saw him clearly, he looked weary and grimy. I hated to tell him what I knew he was waiting

"The notes are gone, Rich," I said, as quietly as I could. In spite of himself his face fell.

"I of course I expected it," he said. "But Mrs. Klopton said over the telephone that you had brought home

a grip and I hoped well, Lord knows we ought not to complain. You're here, damaged, but here." He lifted his

"If you will give me that black bottle and a teaspoon, I'll drink that in arnica, or whatever the stuff is; Rich,

He wheeled and stared at me, the bottle in his hand. "Lost, strayed or stolen?" he queried with forced

Mrs. Klopton came in at that moment, with an eggnog in her hand. She glanced at the clock, and, without

addressing any one in particular, she intimated that it was time for selfrespecting folks to be at home in bed.

McKnight, who could never resist a fling at her back, spoke to me in a stage whisper.

"Is she talking still? or again?" he asked, just before the door closed. There was a second's indecision with the

"Now, then," McKnight said, settling himself in a chair beside the bed, "spit it out. Not the wreck I know

all I want about that. But the theft. I can tell you beforehand that it was a woman."

I had crawled painfully out of bed, and was in the act of pouring the eggnog down the pipe of the

"You don't know the first principles of a good detective yarn," he said scornfully. "Of course, it was the

woman in the empty house next door. You said it was brass pipes, you will remember. Well on with the

So I told the story; I had told it so many times that day that I did it automatically. And I told about the girl

with the bronze hair, and my suspicions. But I did not mention Alison West. McKnight listened to the end

"Well!" he said. "That's something of a mess, isn't it? If you can only prove your mild and childlike

disposition, they couldn't hold you for the murder which is a regular tentwentthirt crime, anyhow. But

the notes that's different. They are not burned, anyhow. Your man wasn't on the train therefore, he wasn't

in the wreck. If he didn't know what he was taking, as you seem to think, he probably reads the papers, and

unless he is a fathead, he's awake by this time to what he's got. He'll try to sell them to Bronson, probably."

We said nothing for a few minutes. McKnight smoked a cigarette and stared at a photograph of Candida over

"I didn't go to Richmond," he observed finally. The remark followed my own thoughts so closely that I

Receiving no response, he lapsed again into thoughtful silence. Mrs. Klopton came in just as the clock struck

one, and made preparation for the night by putting a large gaudy comfortable into an armchair in the

dressingroom, with a smaller, stiffbacked chair for her feet. She was wonderfully attired in a

dressinggown that was reminiscent, in parts, of all the ones she had given me for a half dozen Christmases,

and she had a purple veil wrapped around her head, to hide Heaven knows what deficiency. She examined the

empty eggnog glass, inquired what the evening paper had said about the weather, and then stalked into the

dressingroom, and prepared, with much ostentatious creaking, to sit up all night.

We fell silent again, while McKnight traced a rough outline of the berths on the white tablecover, and

"You think he changed the tags on seven and nine, so that when you went back to bed you thought you were

"Then toward morning, when everybody was asleep, your theory is that he changed the numbers again and

"Jove, what a game of bridge that fellow would play! It was like finessing an eightspot and winning out.

They would scarcely have doubted your story had the tags been reversed in the morning. He certainly left you

in a bad way. Not a jury in the country would stand out against the stains, the stiletto, and the murdered man's

"Of course," said McKnight confidently. "Unless you did it in your sleep. Look at the stains on his pillow,

and the dirk stuck into it. And didn't he have the man Harrington's pocketbook?"

"But why did he go off without the money?" I persisted. "And where does the bronzehaired girl come in?"

"Search me," McKnight retorted flippantly. "Inflammation of the imagination on your part."

"Then there is the piece of telegram. It said lower ten, car seven. It's extremely likely that she had it. That

"I'm getting a headache," he said, putting out his cigarette against the sole of his shoe. "All I'm certain of just

now is that if there hadn't been a wreck, by this time you'd be sitting in an eight by ten cell, and feeling like

"But listen to this," I contended, as he picked up his hat, "this fellow Sullivan is a fugitive, and he's a lot more

likely to make advances to Bronson than to us. We could have the case continued, release Bronson on bail

"You'd better go home," I said firmly. "Go home and go to bed. You're sleepy. You can have Sullivan's red

Mrs. Klopton's voice came drowsily from the next room, punctuated by a yawn. "Oh, I forgot to tell you," she

called, with the suspicious lisp which characterizes her at night, "somebody called up about noon, Mr.

Lawrence. It was long distance, and he said he would call again. The name was" she yawned "Sullivan."

I have always smiled at those cases of spontaneous combustion which, like fusing the component parts of a

seidlitz powder, unite two people in a bubbling and ephemeral ecstasy. But surely there is possible, with but a

single meeting, an attraction so great, a community of mind and interest so strong, that between that first

meeting and the next the bond may grow into something stronger. This is especially true, I fancy, of people

with temperament, the modern substitute for imagination. It is a nice question whether lovers begin to love

Not that I followed any such line of reasoning at the time. I would not even admit my folly to myself. But

during the restless hours of that first night after the accident, when my back ached with lying on it, and any

other position was torture, I found my thoughts constantly going back to Alison West. I dropped into a doze,

to dream of touching her fingers again to comfort her, and awoke to find I had patted a teaspoonful of

medicine out of Mrs. Klopton's indignant hand. What was it McKnight had said about making an egregious

And that brought me back to Richey, and I fancy I groaned. There is no use expatiating on the friendship

between two men who have gone together through college, have quarreled and made it up, fussed together

over politics and debated creeds for years: men don't need to be told, and women can not understand.

Some things were mine, however, and I would hold them: the halcyon breakfast, the queer hat, the pebble in

her small shoe, the gold bag with the broken chain the bag! Why, it was in my pocket at that moment.

I got up painfully and found my coat. Yes, there was the purse, bulging with an opulent suggestion of wealth

inside. I went back to bed again, somewhat dizzy, between effort and the touch of the trinket, so lately hers. I

held it up by its broken chain and gloated over it. By careful attention to orders, I ought to be out in a day or

so. Then I could return it to her. I really ought to do that: it was valuable, and I wouldn't care to trust it to

the mail. I could run down to Richmond, and see her once there was no disloyalty to Rich in that.

I had no intention of opening the little bag. I put it under my pillow which was my reason for refusing to

have the linen slips changed, to Mrs. Klopton's dismay. And sometimes during the morning, while I lay under

a virgin field of white, ornamented with strange flowers, my cigarettes hidden beyond discovery, and Science

and Health on a table by my elbow, as if by the merest accident, I slid my hand under my pillow and touched

McKnight came in about eleven. I heard his car at the curb, followed almost immediately by his slam at the

front door, and his usual clamor on the stairs. He had a bottle under his arm, rightly surmising that I had been

forbidden stimulant, and a large box of cigarettes in his pocket, suspecting my deprivation.

"Well," he said cheerfully. "How did you sleep after keeping me up half the night?"

I slid my hand around: the purse was well covered. "Have it now, or wait till I get the cork out?" he rattled

"I don't want anything," I protested. "I wish you wouldn't be so darned cheerful, Richey." He stopped

"'I am saddest when I sing!'" he quoted unctuously. "It's pure reaction, Lollie. Yesterday the sky was low: I

was digging for my best friend. Today he lies before me, his peevish self. Yesterday I thought the notes

were burned: today I look forward to a good crosscountry chase, and with luck we will draw." His voice

"Oh, I had a little hen and she had a wooden leg And nearly every morning she used to lay an egg "

"She's the best little chicken that we have on the farm And another little drink won't do us any harm "

he finished, twisting out the corkscrew. Then he came over and sat down on the bed.

"Well," he said judicially, "since you drag it from me, I think perhaps it is. You you're such a confirmed

"Nothing of the sort," I denied testily. "Because a man reaches the age of thirty without making maudlin love

"I've taken to long country rides," he went on reflectively, without listening to me, "and yesterday I ran over a

sheep; nearly went into the ditch. But there's a Providence that watches over fools and lovers, and just now I

"You are both," I said with disgust. "If you can be rational for one moment, I wish you would tell me why

"Probably hadn't yet discovered the Bronson notes providing you hold to your theory that the theft was

incidental to the murder. May have wanted his own clothes again, or to thank you for yours. Search me: I

As I said before, I think a lot of my doctor when I am ill. He is a young man, with an air of breezy

selfconfidence and good humor. He looked directly past the bottle, which is a very valuable

accomplishment, and shook hands with McKnight until I could put the cigarettes under the bedclothes. He

had interdicted tobacco. Then he sat down beside the bed and felt around the bandages with hands as gentle

"Nonsense. Take a rest while you have an excuse for it. I wish to thunder I could stay in bed for a day or so. I

"I wouldn't even wear a champagnecolored necktie during business hours," he explained. "By the way, I had

another case from your accident, Mr. Blakeley, late yesterday afternoon. Under the tongue, please." He stuck

I had a sudden terrible vision of the amateur detective coming to light, notebook, cheerful impertinence and

"Keep your mouth closed," the doctor said peremptorily. "No. A woman, with a fractured skull. Beautiful

case. Van Kirk was up to his eyes and sent for me. Hemorrhage, rightsided paralysis, irregular pupils all

"She lifted her right arm before I left," the doctor finished cheerily, "so the operation was a success, even if

"Good Heavens," McKnight broke in, "and I thought you were just an ordinary mortal, like the rest of us! Let

"Yes, and young. Had a wealth of bronzecolored hair. Upon my soul, I hated to cut it."

He looked at the thermometer, murmured something about liquid diet, avoiding my eye Mrs. Klopton was

broiling a chop at the time and took his departure, humming cheerfully as he went downstairs. McKnight

"Jove, I wish I had his constitution," he exclaimed. "Neither nerves nor heart! What a chauffeur he would

"I have an idea," I said grimly, "that this small matter of the murder is going to come up again, and that your

uncle will be in the deuce of a fix if it does. If that woman is going to die, somebody ought to be around to

take her deposition. She knows a lot, if she didn't do it herself. I wish you would go down to the telephone

McKnight went under protest. "I haven't much time," he said, looking at his watch. "I'm to meet Mrs. West

"Why not the daughter?" I inquired. I touched the little gold bag under the pillow.

"Well," he said judicially, "you've always declared against the immaturity and romantic nonsense of very

"'There is more satisfaction to be had out of a good saddle horse!'" he quoted me. "'More excitement out of a

polo pony, and as for the eternal matrimonial chase, give me instead a good stubble, a fox, some decent

"For Heaven's sake, go down to the telephone, you make my head ache," I said savagely.

I hardly know what prompted me to take out the gold purse and look at it. It was an imbecile thing to do

call it impulse, sentimentality, what you wish. I brought it out, one eye on the door, for Mrs. Klopton has a

ready eye and a noiseless shoe. But the house was quiet. Downstairs McKnight was flirting with the

telephone central and there was an odor of boneset tea in the air. I think Mrs. Klopton was fascinated out of

Anyhow, I held up the bag and looked at it. It must have been unfastened, for the next instant there was an

avalanche on the snowfield of the counterpane some money, a wisp of a handkerchief, a tiny booklet with

thin leaves, covered with a powdery substance and a necklace. I drew myself up slowly and stared at the

It was one of the semibarbaric affairs that women are wearing now, a heavy pendant of gold chains and

carved cameos, swung from a thin neck chain of the same metal. The necklace was broken: in three places the

links were pulled apart and the cameos swung loose and partly detached. But it was the supporting chain that

held my eye and fascinated with its sinister suggestion. Three inches of it had been snapped off, and as well

as I knew anything on earth, I knew that the bit of chain that the amateur detective had found, bloodstain

And there was no one I could talk to about it, no one to tell me how hideously absurd it was, no one to give

me a slap and tell me there are tons of fine gold chains made every year, or to point out the long arm of

With my one useful hand I fumbled the things back into the bag and thrust it deep out of sight among the

pillows. Then I lay back in a cold perspiration. What connection had Alison West with this crime? Why had

she stared so at the gunmetal cigarette case that morning on the train? What had alarmed her so at the

farmhouse? What had she taken back to the gate? Why did she wish she had not escaped from the wreck?

And last, in Heaven's name, how did a part of her necklace become torn off and covered with blood?

Downstairs McKnight was still at the telephone, and amusing himself with Mrs. Klopton in the interval of

"Why did he come home in a gray suit, when he went away in a blue?" he repeated. "Well, wrecks are queer

things, Mrs. Klopton. The suit may have turned gray with fright. Or perhaps wrecks do as queer stunts as

lightning. Friend of mine once was struck by lightning; he and the caddy had taken refuge under a tree. After

the flash, when they recovered consciousness, there was my friend in the caddy's clothes, and the caddy in

McKnight's story was interrupted by the indignant slam of the diningroom door. He was obliged to wait

some time, and even his eternal cheerfulness was ebbing when he finally got the hospital.

"Is Doctor Van Kirk there?" he asked. "Not there? Well, can you tell me how the patient is whom Doctor

Williams, from Washington, operated on last night? Well, I'm glad of that. Is she conscious? Do you happen

to know her name? Yes, I'll hold the line." There was a long pause, then McKnight's voice:

"Look here," he said, bursting into the room, "there may be something in your theory, after all. The woman's

"What did I tell you?" I said, sitting up suddenly in bed. "She's probably a sister of that scoundrel in lower

"Well, I'll go there some day soon. She's not conscious yet. In the meantime, the only thing I can do is to keep

an eye, through a detective, on the people who try to approach Bronson. We'll have the case continued,

"Confound this arm," I said, paying for my energy with some excruciating throbs. "There's so much to be

looked after, and here I am, bandaged, splinted, and generally useless. It's a beastly shame."

"Don't forget that I am here," said McKnight pompously. "And another thing, when you feel this way just

remember there are two less desirable places where you might be. One is jail, and the other is " He

But McKnight's lightheartedness jarred on me that morning. I lay and frowned under my helplessness.

When by chance I touched the little gold bag, it seemed to scorch my fingers. Richey, finding me

unresponsive, left to keep his luncheon engagement with Alison West. As he clattered down the stairs, I

turned my back to the morning sunshine and abandoned myself to misery. By what strain on her frayed

nerves was Alison West keeping up, I wondered? Under the circumstances, would I dare to return the bag?

Knowing that I had it, would she hate me for my knowledge? Or had I exaggerated the importance of the

But McKnight had not gone, after all. I heard him coming back, his voice preceding him, and I groaned with

"Wake up!" he called. "Somebody's sent you a lot of flowers. Please hold the box, Mrs. Klopton; I'm going

I roused to feeble interest. My brother's wife is punctilious about such things; all the new babies in the family

"Wonder who they're from?" he said, fumbling in the box for a card. "There's no name yes, here's one."

"Well, what do you know about that!" he exclaimed. "That's something you didn't tell me, Lollie."

"It was hardly worth mentioning," I said mendaciously, with my heart beating until I could hear it. She had

McKnight took a bud and fastened it in his buttonhole. I'm afraid I was not especially pleasant about it.

They were her roses, and anyhow, they were meant for me. Richey left very soon, with an irritating final grin

So he wore one of the roses she had sent me, to luncheon with her, and I lay back among my pillows and tried

to remember that it was his game, anyhow, and that I wasn't even drawing cards. To remember that, and to

I was in the house for a week. Much of that time I spent in composing and destroying letters of thanks to

Miss West, and in growling at the doctor. McKnight dropped in daily, but he was less cheerful than usual.

Now and then I caught him eying me as if he had something to say, but whatever it was he kept it to himself.

Once during the week he went to Baltimore and saw the woman in the hospital there. From the description I

had little difficulty in recognizing the young woman who had been with the murdered man in Pittsburg. But

she was still unconscious. An elderly aunt had appeared, a gaunt person in black, who sat around like a

buzzard on a fence, according to McKnight, and wept, in a mixed figure, into a damp handkerchief.

On the last day of my imprisonment he stopped in to thrash out a case that was coming up in court the next

"We were licked. Ask me something pleasant. Oh, by the way, Bronson's out today."

Not he." McKnight pounced on my ace. "He's no fool. Don't you suppose he knows you took those notes to

Pittsburg? The papers were full of it. And he knows you escaped with your life and a broken arm from the

wreck. What do we do next? The Commonwealth continues the case. A deaf man on a dark night would

"Don't play so fast," I remonstrated. "I have only one arm to your two. Who is trailing Bronson? Did you try

"The murder's evidently a dead issue," I reflected. "No, I'm not joking. The wreck destroyed all the evidence.

But I'm firmly convinced those notes will be offered, either to us or to Bronson very soon. Johnson's a

blackguard, but he's a good detective. He could make his fortune as a game dog. What's he doing?"

McKnight put down his cards, and rising, went to the window. As he held the curtain back his customary grin

"To tell you the truth, Lollie," he said, "for the last two days he has been watching a wellknown Washington

"Why, it's ridiculous," I asserted. "What would they trail me for? Go over and tell Johnson to get out of there,

"You can tell him that yourself." McKnight paused and bent forward. "Hello, here's a visitor; little man with

We listened together to Mrs. Klopton's expostulating tones in the lower hall and the creak of the boards as she

came heavily up the stairs. She had a piece of paper in her hand torn from a pocket accountbook, and on it

"Oh, well, show him up," I said resignedly. "You'd better put those cards away, Richey. I fancy it's the rector

But when the door opened to admit a curiously alert little man, adjusting his glasses with nervous fingers, my

I shook hands without enthusiasm. Here was the one survivor of the wrecked car who could do me any

amount of harm. There was no hope that he had forgotten any of the incriminating details. In fact, he held in

His manner was restrained, but it was evident he was highly excited. I introduced him to McKnight, who has

"I only learned yesterday that you had been er saved," he said rapidly. "Terrible accident unspeakable.

"No. He just wears the splint to be different from other people," McKnight drawled lazily. I glared at him:

"Humerushumorous! Pretty good," he cackled. "I must say you keep up your spirits pretty well, considering

"You seem to have escaped injury," I parried. He was fumbling for something in his pockets.

"Yes, I escaped," he replied abstractedly. "Remarkable thing, too. I haven't a doubt I would have broken my

neck, but I landed on you'll never guess what! I landed head first on the very pillow which was under

inspection at the time of the wreck. You remember, don't you? Where did I put that package?"

He found it finally and opened it on a table, displaying with some theatricalism a rectangular piece of muslin

"You recognize it?" he said. "The stains, you see, and the hole made by the dirk. I tried to bring away the

Richey touched the pieces gingerly. "By George," he said, "and you carry that around in your pocket! What if

But Mr. Hotchkiss was not listening. He stood bent somewhat forward, leaning over the table, and fixed me

"Then I have a disagreeable task," he said with evident relish. "Of course, you had considered the matter of

the man Harrington's death closed, after the wreck. I did myself. As far as I was concerned, I meant to let it

remain so. There were no other survivors, at least none that I knew of, and in spite of circumstances, there

"I verified your identity, for instance, as soon as I recovered from the shock. Also I found on inquiring of

McKnight came forward threateningly. "Who are you, anyhow?" he demanded. "And how is this any

"I have a minor position here," he said, reaching for a visiting card. "I am a very small patch on the seat of

McKnight muttered something about certain offensive designs against the said patch and retired grumbling to

the window. Our visitor was opening the paper with a tremendous expenditure of energy.

"The Pittsburg police have sent to Baltimore two detectives who are looking up the survivors of the illfated

Washington Flier. It has transpired that Simon Harrington, the Wood Street merchant of that city, was not

killed in the wreck, but was murdered in his berth the night preceding the accident. Shortly before the

collision, John Flanders, the conductor of the Flier, sent this telegram to the chief of police:

"'Body of Simon Harrington found stabbed in his berth, lower ten, Ontario, at sixthirty this morning.

"It is hoped that the survivors of the wrecked car Ontario will be found, to tell what they know of the

"Mr. John Gilmore, head of the steel company for which Mr. Harrington was purchasing agent, has signified

"So you see," Hotchkiss concluded, "there's trouble brewing. You and I are the only survivors of that

I did not contradict him, but I knew of two others, at least: Alison West, and the woman we had left beside

the road that morning, babbling incoherently, her black hair tumbling over her white face.

"I have already tried and failed. To find him would not clear you, of course, unless we could establish some

connection between him and the murdered man. It is the only thing I see, however. I have learned this much,"

McKnight came forward and suddenly held out his hand. "Mr. Hotchkiss," he said, "I I'm sorry if I have

been offensive. I thought when you came in, that, like the Irishman and the government, you were 'forninst'

us. If you will put those cheerful relics out of sight somewhere, I should be glad to have you dine with me at

the Incubator." (His name for his bachelor apartment.) "Compared with Johnson, you are the great original

The strength of this was lost on Hotchkiss, but the invitation was clear. They went out together, and from my

window I watched them get into McKnight's car. It was raining, and at the corner the Cannonball skidded.

Across the street my detective, Johnson, looked after them with his crooked smile. As he turned up his collar

I left the window and sat down in the growing dusk. So the occupant of lower seven had got on the car at

Cresson, probably with Alison West and her companion. There was some one she cared about enough to

"You may throw out those roses," I said without looking at her. "They are quite dead."

"They have been quite dead for three days," she retorted spitefully. "Euphemia said you threatened to dismiss

By Sunday evening, a week after the wreck, my inaction had goaded me to frenzy. The very sight of Johnson

across the street or lurking, always within sight of the house, kept me constantly exasperated. It was on that

day that things began to come to a focus, a burningglass of events that seemed to center on me.

I dined alone that evening in no cheerful frame of mind. There had been a polo game the day before and I had

lent a pony, which is always a bad thing to do. And she had wrenched her shoulder, besides helping to lose

the game. There was no one in town: the temperature was ninety and climbing, and my left hand persistently

Mrs. Klopton herself saw me served, my bread buttered and cut in tidbits, my meat ready for my fork. She

"The paper says still warmer," she ventured. "The thermometer is ninetytwo now."

"And this coffee is two hundred and fifty," I said, putting down my cup. "Where is Euphemia? I haven't seen

"Euphemia is in bed," Mrs. Klopton said gravely. "Is your meat cut small enough, Mr. Lawrence?" Mrs.

Klopton can throw more mystery into an ordinary sentence than any one I know. She can say, "Are your

sheets damp, sir?" And I can tell from her tone that the house across the street has been robbed, or that my

left hand neighbor has appendicitis. So now I looked up and asked the question she was waiting for.

"Frightened into her bed," Mrs. Klopton said in a stage whisper. "She's had three hot water bottles and she

"She oughtn't to take hot water bottles," I said in my severest tone. "One would make me moan. You need not

Mrs. Klopton sailed to the door, where she stopped and wheeled indignantly. "I only hope you won't laugh on

the wrong side of your face some morning, Mr. Lawrence," she declared, with Christian fortitude. "But I

I was half inclined to tell her that both it and we were under police surveillance at that moment. But I like

Mrs. Klopton, in spite of the fact that I make her life a torment for her, so I refrained.

"Last night, when the paper said it was going to storm, I sent Euphemia to the roof to bring the rugs in. Eliza

had slipped out, although it was her evening in. Euphemia went up to the roof it was eleven o'clock and

soon I heard her running downstairs crying. When she got to my room she just folded up on the floor. She

said there was a black figure sitting on the parapet of the house next door the empty house and that when

I had finished my dinner and was lighting a cigarette. "If there was any one up there, which I doubt, they

probably sneezed," I suggested. "But if you feel uneasy, I'll take a look around the roof tonight before I turn

in. As far as Euphemia goes, I wouldn't be uneasy about her doesn't she always have an attack of some sort

So I made a superficial examination of the window locks that night, visiting parts of the house that I had not

seen since I bought it. Then I went to the roof. Evidently it had not been intended for any purpose save to

cover the house, for unlike the houses around, there was no staircase. A ladder and a trapdoor led to it, and

it required some nice balancing on my part to get up with my useless arm. I made it, however, and found this

unexplored part of my domain rather attractive. It was cooler than downstairs, and I sat on the brick parapet

and smoked my final cigarette. The roof of the empty house adjoined mine along the back wing, but

investigation showed that the trapdoor across the low dividing wall was bolted underneath.

There was nothing out of the ordinary anywhere, and so I assured Mrs. Klopton. Needless to say, I did not tell

her that I had left the trapdoor open, to see if it would improve the temperature of the house. I went to bed at

midnight, merely because there was nothing else to do. I turned on the night lamp at the head of my bed, and

picked up a volume of Shaw at random (it was Arms and the Man, and I remember thinking grimly that I was

a good bit of a chocolate cream soldier myself), and prepared to go to sleep. Shaw always puts me to sleep. I

have no apologies to make for what occurred that night, and not even an explanation that I am sure of. I did a

It was something after two when the doorbell rang. It rang quickly, twice. I got up drowsily, for the maids

and Mrs. Klopton always lock themselves beyond reach of the bell at night, and put on a dressinggown. The

bell rang again on my way downstairs. I lit the hall light and opened the door. I was wideawake now, and I

saw that it was Johnson. His bald head shone in the light his crooked mouth was twisted in a smile.

He closed the vestibule door behind him and cavalierly turned out the light. Our dialogue was sharp, staccato.

"Have you a key to the empty house next door?" he demanded. "Somebody's in there, and the latch is

"No. There's a light moving up from room to room. I saw something like it last night, and I have been

"All kinds in the gun rack," I replied, and going into the den, I came back with a Smith and Wesson. "I'm not

much use," I explained, "with this arm, but I'll do what I can. There may be somebody there. The servants

Johnson planned the campaign. He suggested on account of my familiarity with the roof, that I go there and

cut off escape in that direction. "I have Robison out there now the patrolman on the beat," he said. "He'll

I was rather amused. I put on some clothes and felt my way carefully up the stairs, the revolver swinging free

in my pocket, my hand on the rail. At the foot of the ladder I stopped and looked up. Above me there was a

gray rectangle of sky dotted with stars. It occurred to me that with my one serviceable hand holding the

ladder, I was hardly in a position to defend myself, that I was about to hoist a body that I am rather careful of

into a danger I couldn't see and wasn't particularly keen about anyhow. I don't mind saying that the seconds it

I got to the top, however, without incident. I could see fairly well after the darkness of the house beneath, but

there was nothing suspicious in sight. The roofs, separated by two feet of brick wall, stretched around me,

unbroken save by an occasional chimney. I went very softly over to the other trap, the one belonging to the

suspected house. It was closed, but I imagined I could hear Johnson's footsteps ascending heavily. Then even

that was gone. A nearby clock struck three as I stood waiting. I examined my revolver then, for the first

I had been rather skeptical until now. I had had the usual tolerant attitude of the man who is summoned from

his bed to search for burglars, combined with the artificial courage of firearms. With the discovery of my

empty gun, I felt like a man on the top of a volcano in lively eruption. Suddenly I found myself staring

incredulously at the trapdoor at my feet. I had examined it early in the evening and found it bolted. Did I

imagine it, or had it raised about an inch? Wasn't it moving slowly as I looked? No, I am not a hero: I was

startled almost into a panic. I had one arm, and whoever was raising that trapdoor had two. My knees had a

Johnson's footsteps were distinct enough, but he was evidently far below. The trap, raised perhaps two inches

now, remained stationary. There was no sound from beneath it: once I thought I heard two or three gasping

respirations: I am not sure they were not my own. I wanted desperately to stand on one leg at a time and hold

I did not see the hand appear. There was nothing there, and then it was there, clutching the frame of the trap. I

There was not a sound from beneath. The next moment I was kneeling and had clutched the wrist just above

the hand. After a second's struggle, the arm was still. With something real to face, I was myself again.

"Don't move, or I'll stand on the trap and break your arm," I panted. What else could I threaten? I couldn't

And then I realized the thing that stayed with me for a month, the thing I can not think of even now without a

shudder. The hand lay ice cold, strangely quiescent. Under my fingers, an artery was beating feebly. The

"Good Lord," I muttered, and remained on my knees, staring at the spot where the hand had been. It was gone

I held up my own hand in the starlight and stared at a long scratch in the palm. "A woman!" I said to myself

Johnson was striking matches below and swearing softly to himself. "How the devil do you get to the roof?"

He found the ladder after a short search and stood at the bottom, looking up at me. "Well, I suppose you

haven't seen him?" he inquired. "There are enough darned cubbyholes in this house to hide a patrol wagon

By the sound of his diminishing footsteps I supposed it was a rear staircase. He came up again in ten minutes

"He's gone, all right," he said ruefully. "If you'd been attending to your business, Robison, you'd have

"Well," I broke in, as cheerfully as I could, "if you are through with this jolly little affair, and can get down

my ladder without having my housekeeper ring the burglar alarm, I have some good Monongahela whisky

They came without a second invitation across the roof, and with them safely away from the house I breathed

more freely. Down in the den I fulfilled my promise, which Johnson drank to the toast, "Coming through the

rye." He examined my gun rack with the eye of a connoisseur, and even when he was about to go he cast a

"No," I said with a bitterness that he noticed but failed to comprehend. "I'm a chocolate cream soldier you

"Never heard of him," the detective said indifferently. "Well, good night, Mr. Blakeley. Much obliged." At

"I suppose you understand, Mr. Blakeley," he said awkwardly, "that this er surveillance is all in the day's

"Sometime when you are in an open mood, Johnson," I returned, "you can explain why I am being watched at

On Monday I went out for the first time. I did not go to the office. I wanted to walk. I thought fresh air and

exercise would drive away the blue devils that had me by the throat. McKnight insisted on a long day in his

"I don't know why not," he said sulkily. "I can't walk. I haven't walked two consecutive blocks in three years.

Automobiles have made legs mere ornaments and some not even that. We could have Johnson out there

"He can chase us just as well at five miles an hour," I said. "But what gets me, McKnight, is why I am under

"No. That is, I didn't say it was a lady." I groaned as I tried to get my splinted arm into a coat. "Anyhow, she

It had rained in the early morning, and Mrs. Klopton predicted more showers. In fact, so firm was her belief

"Never mind," I said. "We can leave it next door; I have a story to tell you, Richey, and it requires proper

McKnight was puzzled, but he followed me obediently round to the kitchen entrance of the empty house. It

was unlocked, as I had expected. While we climbed to the upper floor I retailed the events of the previous

"It's the finest thing I ever heard of," McKnight said, staring up at the ladder and the trap. "What a vaudeville

skit it would make! Only you ought not to have put your foot on her hand. They don't do it in the best

"You don't understand the situation at all, Richey!" I exclaimed. "What would you say if I tell you it was the

"A lady!" he repeated. "Why, I'd say it was a darned compromising situation, and that the less you say of it

the better. Look here, Lawrence, I think you dreamed it. You've been in the house too much. I take it all back:

"She escaped through this door, I suppose," I said as patiently as I could. "Evidently down the back staircase.

"According to the best precedents in these affairs, we should find a glove about here," he said as we started

down. But he was more impressed than he cared to own. He examined the dusty steps carefully, and once,

when a bit of loose plaster fell just behind him, he started like a nervous woman.

"What I don't understand is why you let her go," he said, stopping once, puzzled. "You're not usually

"When we get out into the country, Richey," I replied gravely, "I am going to tell you another story, and if

you don't tell me I'm a fool and a craven, on the strength of it, you are no friend of mine."

We stumbled through the twilight of the staircase into the blackness of the shuttered kitchen. The house had

the moldy smell of closed buildings: even on that warm September morning it was damp and chilly. As we

"Now that we are out," he said, "I don't mind telling you that I have been there before. Do you remember the

"Well, I was curious about that thing," he went on, as we started up the street, "and I went back. The street

door was unlocked, and I examined every room. I was Mrs. Klopton's ghost that carried a light, and clumb."

"Only a clean place rubbed on the window opposite your dressingroom. Splendid view of an untidy interior.

If that house is ever occupied, you'd better put stained glass in that window of yours."

As we turned the corner I glanced back. Half a block behind us Johnson was moving our way slowly. When

he saw me he stopped and proceeded with great deliberation to light a cigar. By hurrying, however, he caught

the car that we took, and stood unobtrusively on the rear platform. He looked fagged, and absentmindedly

"We will give him a run for his money," he declared, as the car moved countryward. "Conductor, let us off at

At one o'clock, after a sixmile ramble, we entered a small country hotel. We had seen nothing of Johnson

for a half hour. At that time he was a quarter of a mile behind us, and losing rapidly. Before we had finished

our luncheon he staggered into the inn. One of his boots was under his arm, and his whole appearance was

deplorable. He was coated with mud, streaked with perspiration, and he limped as he walked. He chose a

table not far from us and ordered Scotch. Beyond touching his hat he paid no attention to us.

"I'm just getting my second wind," McKnight declared. "How do you feel, Mr. Johnson? Six or eight miles

more and we'll all enjoy our dinners." Johnson put down the glass he had raised to his lips without replying.

The fact was, however, that I was like Johnson. I was soft from my week's inaction, and I was pretty well

done up. McKnight, who was a well spring of vitality and high spirits, ordered a strange concoction, made of

nearly everything in the bar, and sent it over to the detective, but Johnson refused it.

"I hate that kind of person," McKnight said pettishly. "Kind of a fellow that thinks you're going to poison his

When we got back to the car line, with Johnson a draggled and drooping tail to the kite, I was in better spirits.

I had told McKnight the story of the three hours just after the wreck; I had not named the girl, of course; she

had my promise of secrecy. But I told him everything else. It was a relief to have a fresh mind on it: I had

puzzled so much over the incident at the farmhouse, and the necklace in the gold bag, that I had lost

He had been interested, but inclined to be amused, until I came to the broken chain. Then he had whistled

"But there are tons of fine gold chains made every year," he said. "Why in the world do you think that the

I had looked around. Johnson was far behind, scraping the mud off his feet with a piece of stick.

"I have the short end of the chain in the sealskin bag," I reminded him. "When I couldn't sleep this morning I

thought I would settle it, one way or the other. It was hell to go along the way I had been doing. And there's

"Well," he said finally, "you know the girl, of course, and I don't. But if you like her and I think myself

you're rather hard hit, old man I wouldn't give a whoop about the chain in the gold purse. It's just one of the

little coincidences that hang people now and then. And as for last night if she's the kind of a girl you say

she is, and you think she had anything to do with that, you you're addled, that's all. You can depend on it,

the lady of the empty house last week is the lady of last night. And yet your train acquaintance was in

Just before we got off the car, I reverted to the subject again. It was never far back in my mind.

"About the young lady of the train, Rich," I said, with what I suppose was elaborate carelessness, "I don't

want you to get a wrong impression. I am rather unlikely to see her again, but even if I do, I I believe she is

He made no reply, but as I opened the door with my latchkey he stood looking up at me from the pavement

"Love is like the measles," he orated. "The older you get it, the worse the attack."

Johnson did not appear again that day. A small man in a raincoat took his place. The next morning I made my

initial trip to the office, the raincoat still on hand. I had a short conference with Miller, the district attorney, at

eleven. Bronson was under surveillance, he said, and any attempt to sell the notes to him would probably

result in their recovery. In the meantime, as I knew, the Commonwealth had continued the case, in hope of

At noon I left the office and took a veterinarian to see Candida, the injured pony. By one o'clock my first

day's duties were performed, and a long Sahara of hot afternoon stretched ahead. McKnight, always glad to

escape from the grind, suggested a vaudeville, and in sheer ennui I consented. I could neither ride, drive nor

"Coolest place in town these days," he declared. "Electric fans, breezy songs, airy costumes. And there's

He gravely bought three tickets and presented the detective with one. Then we went in. Having lived a

normal, busy life, the theater in the afternoon is to me about on a par with icecream for breakfast. Up on the

stage a very stout woman in short pink skirts, with a smile that McKnight declared looked like a slash in a

roll of butter, was singing nasally, with a laborious kick at the end of each verse. Johnson, two rows ahead,

"Look at the first box to the right," he said, in a stage whisper. "I want you to come over at the end of this

It was the first time I had seen her since I put her in the cab at Baltimore. Outwardly I presume I was calm,

for no one turned to stare at me, but every atom of me cried out at the sight of her. She was leaning, bent

forward, lips slightly parted, gazing raptly at the Japanese conjurer who had replaced what McKnight

disrespectfully called the Columns of Hercules. Compared with the draggled lady of the farmhouse, she was

For that first moment there was nothing but joy at the sight of her. McKnight's touch on my arm brought me

"Come over and meet them," he said. "That's the cousin Miss West is visiting, Mrs. Dallas."

But I would not go. After he went I sat there alone, painfully conscious that I was being pointed out and

stared at from the box. The abominable Japanese gave way to yet more atrocious performing dogs.

"How many offers of marriage will the young lady in the box have?" The dog stopped sagely at 'none,' and

then pulled out a card that said eight. Wild shouts of glee by the audience. "The fools," I muttered.

After a little I glanced over. Mrs. Dallas was talking to McKnight, but She was looking straight at me. She

was flushed, but more calm than I, and she did not bow. I fumbled for my hat, but the next moment I saw that

"I've made an engagement for you," he said. "Mrs. Dallas asked me to bring you to dinner tonight, and I said

I knew you would fall all over yourself to go. You are requested to bring along the broken arm, and any other

"I'll do nothing of the sort," I declared, struggling against my inclination. "I can't even tie my necktie, and I

"Oh, that's all right," he said easily. "I'll send Stogie over to fix you up, and Mrs. Dal knows all about the

(Stogie is his Japanese factotum, so called because he is lean, a yellowish brown in color, and because he

The Cinematograph was finishing the program. The house was dark and the music had stopped, as it does in

the circus just before somebody risks his neck at so much a neck in the Dip of Death, or the hundredfoot

I confess to a return of some of the sickening sensations of the wreck; people around me were leaning

forward with tense faces. Then the letters were gone, and I saw a long level stretch of track, even the broken

stone between the ties standing out distinctly. Far off under a cloud of smoke a small object was rushing

Now it was on us, a mammoth in size, with huge drivers and a colossal tender. The engine leaped aside, as if

just in time to save us from destruction, with a glimpse of a stooping fireman and a grimy engineer. The long

train of sleepers followed. From a forward vestibule a porter in a white coat waved his hand. The rest of the

cars seemed still wrapped in slumber. With mixed sensations I saw my own car, Ontario, fly past, and then I

On the lowest step at the last car, one foot hanging free, was a man. His black derby hat was pulled well

down to keep it from blowing away, and his coat was flying open in the wind. He was swung well out from

"Good God, that's my man!" I said hoarsely, as the audience broke into applause. McKnight half rose: in his

I dropped into my chair limply, and tried to control my excitement. "The man on the last platform of the

"Could you see his face?" McKnight asked in an undertone. "Would you know him again?"

"No. His hat was pulled down and his head was bent I'm going back to find out where that picture was taken.

The audience, busy with its wraps, had not noticed. Mrs. Dallas and Alison West had gone. In front of us

"This way," I motioned to McKnight, and we wheeled into the narrow passage beside us, back of the boxes.

At the end there was a door leading into the wings, and as we went boldly through I turned the key.

The final set was being struck, and no one paid any attention to us. Luckily they were similarly indifferent to

a banging at the door I had locked, a banging which, I judged, signified Johnson.

Stage hands were hurrying in every direction; pieces of the side wall of the last drawingroom menaced us; a

switchboard behind us was singing like a teakettle. Everywhere we stepped we were in somebody's way. At

last we were across, confronting a man in his shirt sleeves, who by dots and dashes of profanity seemed to be

"I would like to ask," I replied, "if you have any idea just where the last cinematograph picture was taken."

"The announcement says two miles," McKnight put in, "but we should like to know whether it is railroad

"I am sorry I can't tell you," he replied, more civilly. "We get those pictures by contract. We don't take them

"New York." He stepped forward and grasped a super by the shoulder. "What in blazes are you doing with

that gold chair in a kitchen set? Take that piece of pink plush there and throw it over a soap box, if you

I had not realized the extent of the shock, but now I dropped into a chair and wiped my forehead. The

unexpected glimpse of Alison West, followed almost immediately by the revelation of the picture, had left

"He says the moving picture people have an office downtown. We can make it if we go now."

So he called a cab, and we started at a gallop. There was no sign of the detective. "Upon my word," Richey

The people at the downtown office of the cinematograph company were very obliging. The picture had been

taken, they said, at M, just two miles beyond the scene of the wreck. It was not much, but it was something

to work on. I decided not to go home, but to send McKnight's Jap for my clothes, and to dress at the

Incubator. I was determined, if possible, to make my next day's investigations without Johnson. In the

meantime, even if it was for the last time, I would see Her that night. I gave Stogie a note for Mrs. Klopton,

and with my dinner clothes there came back the gold bag, wrapped in tissue paper.

Certain things about the dinner at the Dallas house will always be obscure to me. Dallas was something in the

Fish Commission, and I remember his reeling off fish eggs in billions while we ate our caviar. He had some

particular stunt he had been urging the government to for years something about forbidding the

establishment of mills and factories on riverbanks it seems they kill the fish, either the smoke, or the

Mrs. Dallas was there, I think. Of course, I suppose she must have been; and there was a woman in yellow: I

took her in to dinner, and I remember she loosened my clams for me so I could get them. But the only real

person at the table was a girl across in white, a sublimated young woman who was as brilliant as I was stupid,

who never by any chance looked directly at me, and who appeared and disappeared across the candles and

When the dinner had progressed from salmon to roast, and the conversation had done the same thing from

fish to scandal the yellow gown turned to me. "We have been awfully good, haven't we, Mr. Blakeley?" she

asked. "Although I am crazy to hear, I have not said 'wreck' once. I'm sure you must feel like the survivor of

"If you want me to tell you about the wreck," I said, glancing across the table, "I'm sorry to be disappointing,

"You are fortunate to be able to forget it." It was the first word Miss West had spoken directly to me, and it

"There are some things I have not forgotten," I said, over the candles. "I recall coming to myself some time

"Ah!" said the lady in yellow, leaning forward breathlessly. Miss West was staring at me coldly, but, once

"That a girl was trying to rouse me, and that she told me I had been on fire twice already." A shudder went

"But surely that isn't the end of the story," Mrs. Dallas put in aggrievedly. "Why, that's the most tantalizing

"I'm afraid that's all," I said. "She went her way and I went mine. If she recalls me at all, she probably thinks

of me as a weakkneed individual who faints like a woman when everything is over.

"What did I tell you?" Mrs. Dallas asserted triumphantly. "He fainted, did you hear? when everything was

I would have given a lot by that time if I had not mentioned the girl. But McKnight took it up there and

"Blakeley is a regular geyser," he said. "He never spouts until he reaches the boiling point. And by that same

token, although he hasn't said much about the Lady of the Wreck, I think he is crazy about her. In fact, I am

sure of it. He thinks he has locked his secret in the caves of his soul, but I call you to witness that he has it

I squirmed miserably and tried to avoid the startled eyes of the girl across the table. I wanted to choke

"It isn't fair," I said as coolly as I could. "I have my fingers crossed; you are five against one."

"And to think that there was a murder on that very train," broke in the lady in yellow. "It was a perfect

crescendo of horrors, wasn't it? And what became of the murdered man, Mr. Blakeley?"

"They say good Pittsburgers go to Atlantic City when they die," he said. "So we are reasonably certain the

The meal was over at last, and once in the drawingroom it was clear we hung heavy on the hostess' hands.

"It is so hard to get people for bridge in September," she wailed. "there is absolutely nobody in town. Six is a

The matter settled itself, however. I was hopeless, save as a dummy; Miss West said it was too hot for cards,

and went out on a balcony that overlooked the Mall. With obvious relief Mrs. Dallas had the cardtable

brought, and I was face to face with the minute I had dreaded and hoped for for a week.

Now it had come, it was more difficult than I had anticipated. I do not know if there was a moon, but there

was the urban substitute for it the arc light. It threw the shadow of the balcony railing in long black bars

against her white gown, and as it swung sometimes her face was in the light. I drew a chair close so that I

"Do you know," I said, when she made no effort at speech, "that you are a much more formidable person

The light swung on her face; she was smiling faintly. "The hat with the green ribbons!" she said. "I must take

"I have not forgotten anything." I pulled myself up short. This was hardly loyalty to Richey. His voice

came through the window just then, and perhaps I was wrong, but I thought she raised her head to listen.

"Look at this hand," he was saying. "Regular pianola: you could play it with your feet."

"He's a dear, isn't he?" Alison said unexpectedly. "No matter how depressed and downhearted I am, I always

"He's more than that," I returned warmly. "He is the most honorable fellow I know. If he wasn't so much that

way, he would have a career before him. He wanted to put on the doors of our offices, Blakeley and

>From my comparative poverty to the wealth of the girl beside me was a single mental leap. From that wealth

"I wonder if you know that I had been to Pittsburg to see your grandfather when I met you?" I said.

"Yes. And you remember the alligator bag that I told you was exchanged for the one you cut off my arm?"

She nodded expectantly. "Well, in that valise were the forged Andy Bronson notes, and Mr. Gilmore's

She was on her feet in an instant. "In that bag!" she cried. "Oh, why didn't you tell me that before? Oh, it's so

She stopped suddenly and sat down again. "I do not know that I am sorry, after all," she said after a pause.

"Mr. Bronson was a friend of my father's. I I suppose it was a bad thing for you, losing the papers?"

"Well, it was not a good thing," I conceded. "While we are on the subject of losing things, do you remember

She did not reply at once. The shadow of a column was over her face, but I guessed that she was staring at

"I picked it up in the street car," I said, with a cheerfulness I did not feel. "It looks like a very opulent little

Why didn't she speak about the necklace? For just a careless word to make me sane again!

"You!" she repeated, horrorstricken. And then I produced the purse and held it out on my palm. "I should

have sent it to you before, I suppose, but, as you know, I have been laid up since the wreck."

We both saw McKnight at the same moment. He had pulled the curtains aside and was standing looking out

at us. The tableau of give and take was unmistakable; the gold purse, her outstretched hand, my own attitude.

"They're mad at me in there," he said airily, "so I came out. I suppose the reason they call it bridge is because

The heat broke up the card group soon after, and they all came out for the night breeze. I had no more words

I went back to the Incubator for the night. We said almost nothing on the way home; there was a constraint

between us for the first time that I could remember. It was too early for bed, and so we smoked in the

livingroom and tried to talk of trivial things. After a time even those failed, and we sat silent. It was

"Yes, it was. You understand, don't you, Rich, that, having given her my word, I couldn't tell you?"

We sat for some time and smoked. Then Richey got up and stretched himself. "I'm off to bed, old man," he

I heard him go into his room and lock the door. It was a bad hour for me. The first shadow between us, and

McKnight is always a sympathizer with the early worm. It was late when he appeared. Perhaps, like myself,

he had not slept well. But he was apparently cheerful enough, and he made a better breakfast than I did. It

was one o'clock before we got to Baltimore. After a half hour's wait we took a local for M, the station near

We passed the scene of the wreck, McKnight with curiosity, I with a sickening sense of horror. Back in the

fields was the little farmhouse where Alison West and I had intended getting coffee, and winding away from

the track, maple trees shading it on each side, was the lane where we had stopped to rest, and where I had it

seemed presumption beyond belief now where I had tried to comfort her by patting her hand.

We got out at M, a small place with two or three houses and a general store. The station was a oneroomed

affair, with a railedoff place at the end, where a scale, a telegraph instrument and a chair constituted the

The station agent was a young man with a shrewd face. He stopped hammering a piece of wood over a hole

"We want to ask you a few questions," began McKnight, perching himself on the railing and kicking the chair

"Wait a minute," said the agent, glancing through the window. "There's a hen in that crate choking herself to

He was back in a minute, and took up his position near a sawdustfilled box that did duty as a cuspidor.

"In the first place," I began, "do you remember the day the Washington Flier was wrecked below here?"

"There was no one hanging there when she passed here," he said with conviction. "I watched her out of

"Did you see anything that morning of a man about my size, carrying a small grip, and wearing dark clothes

McKnight was trying to look unconcerned, but I was frankly anxious. It was clear that the man had jumped

"Well, yes, I did." The agent cleared his throat. "When the smash came the operator at MX sent word along

the wire, both ways. I got it here, and I was pretty near crazy, though I knew it wasn't any fault of mine.

"I was standing on the track looking down, for I couldn't leave the office, when a young fellow with light hair

"'That's what's left of the Washington Flier,' I said, 'and I guess there's souls going up in that smoke.'

"'That's what I mean,' I said; 'split to kindling wood because Rafferty, on the second section, didn't want to be

"I got him into the station and he came around, but he kept on groaning something awful. He'd sprained his

ankle, and when he got a little better I drove him over in Carter's milk wagon to the Carter place, and I reckon

"That's all or, no, there's something else. About noon that day one of the Carter twins came down with a

note from him asking me to send a longdistance message to some one in Washington."

"I reckon I've forgot the name, but the message was that this fellow Sullivan was his name was at M, and

"He wouldn't have sent that message to me," I said to McKnight, rather crestfallen. "He'd have every object in

"There might be reasons," McKnight observed judicially. "He might not have found the papers then."

"It might have been I can't say. But the man wasn't there, and there was a lot of noise. I couldn't hear well.

Then in half an hour down came the other twin to say the gentleman was taking on awful and didn't want the

"Yes. Limped down here in about three days and took the noon train for the city."

It seemed a certainty now that our man, having hurt himself somewhat in his jump, had stayed quietly in the

farmhouse until he was able to travel. But, to be positive, we decided to visit the Carter place.

I gave the station agent a fivedollar bill, which he rolled up with a couple of others and stuck in his pocket. I

It was not until we had climbed the hill and turned onto the road to the Carter place that I realized where we

were going. Although we approached it from another direction, I knew the farmhouse at once. It was the

one where Alison West and I had breakfasted nine days before. With the new restraint between us, I did not

tell McKnight. I wondered afterward if he had suspected it. I saw him looking hard at the gatepost which

had figured in one of our mysteries, but he asked no questions. Afterward he grew almost taciturn, for him,

We opened the front gate of the Carter place and went slowly up the walk. Two ragged youngsters, alike even

As we got to the porch we heard voices, and stopped. I knocked, but the people within, engaged in animated,

In the stuffy farm parlor two people were sitting. One, a pleasantfaced woman with a checked apron, rose,

somewhat embarrassed, to meet us. She did not know me, and I was thankful. But our attention was riveted

on a little man who was sitting before a table, writing busily. It was Hotchkiss!

"Look here," said McKnight suddenly, "did you make any inquiries at the station?"

"A few," he confessed. "I went to the theater last night I felt the need of a little relaxation and the sight of

a picture there, a cinematograph affair, started a new line of thought. Probably the same clue brought you

"I gave him five dollars," was the apologetic answer. Mrs. Carter, hearing sounds of strife in the yard, went

"I think the identity of the man is established," he said. "What number of hat do you wear, Mr. Blakeley?"

"Well, it's only piling up evidence," he said cheerfully. "On the night of the murder you wore light gray silk

underclothing, with the second button of the shirt missing. Your hat had 'L. B.' in gilt letters inside, and there

"Hush," McKnight protested. "If word gets to Mrs. Klopton that Mr. Blakeley was wrecked, or robbed, or

whatever it was, with a button missing and a hole in one sock, she'll retire to the Old Ladies' Home. I've heard

Mr. Hotchkiss was without a sense of humor. He regarded McKnight gravely and went on:

"I've been up in the room where the man lay while he was unable to get away, and there is nothing there. But

"Mrs. Carter tells me that in unpacking his grip the other day she took out of the coat of the pajamas some

pieces of a telegram. As I figure it, the pajamas were his own. He probably had them on when he effected the

I nodded assent. All I had retained of my own clothing was the suit of pajamas I was wearing and my

"Therefore the telegram was his, not yours. I have pieces here, but some are missing. I am not discouraged,

He spread out some bits of yellow paper, and we bent over them curiously. It was something like this:

"Now," Hotchkiss announced, "I make it something like this: The 'p.' is one of two things, pistol you

remember the little pearlhandled affair belonging to the murdered man or it is pocketbook. I am inclined

to the latter view, as the pocketbook had been disturbed and the pistol had not."

"Now," I said, rearranging them, "it happens, Mr. Hotchkiss, that I found one of these pieces of the telegram

on the train. I thought it had been dropped by some one else, you see, but that's immaterial.

Arranged this way it almost makes sense. Fill out that 'p.' with the rest of the word, as I imagine it, and it

McKnight slapped Hotchkiss on the back. "You're a trump," he said. "Br is Bronson, of course. It's almost

too easy. You see, Mr. Blakeley here engaged lower ten, but found it occupied by the man who was later

murdered there. The man who did the thing was a friend of Bronson's, evidently, and in trying to get the

"There are still some things to be explained." Mr. Hotchkiss wiped his glasses and put them on. "For one

I did not glance at McKnight. I felt that the hand, with which I was gathering up the bits of torn paper were

shaking. It seemed to me that this astute little man was going to drag in the girl in spite of me.

"Well," he said, "we've done something. We've found where the murderer left the train, we know what day he

"It seems the irony of fate," said McKnight, getting up, "that a man should kill another man for certain papers

he is supposed to be carrying, find he hasn't got them after all, decide to throw suspicion on another man by

changing berths and getting out, bag and baggage, and then, by the merest fluke of chance, take with him, in

the valise he changed for his own, the very notes he was after. It was a bit of luck for him."

"Then why," put in Hotchkiss doubtfully, "why did he collapse when he heard of the wreck? And what about

the telephone message the station agent sent? You remember they tried to countermand it, and with some

"We will ask him those questions when we get him," McKnight said. We were on the unrailed front porch by

that time, and Hotchkiss had put away his notebook. The mother of the twins followed us to the steps.

"Dear me," she exclaimed volubly, "and to think I was forgetting to tell you! I put the young man to bed with

a spice poultice on his ankle: my mother always was a firm believer in spice poultices. It's wonderful what

they will do in croup! And then I took the children and went down to see the wreck. It was Sunday, and the

mister had gone to church; hasn't missed a day since he took the pledge nine years ago. And on the way I met

two people, a man and a woman. They looked half dead, so I sent them right here for breakfast and some

Hotchkiss was listening absently: McKnight was whistling under his breath, staring down across the field to

where a break in the woods showed a half dozen telegraph poles, the line of the railroad.

"It must have been twelve o'clock when we got back; I wanted the children to see everything, because it isn't

"The young man upstairs was awake," she went on, "and hammering at his door like all possessed. And it

"I would like to see that lock," Hotchkiss said promptly, but for some reason the woman demurred.

"I will bring the key down," she said and disappeared. When she returned she held out an ordinary door key

"We had to break the lock," she volunteered, "and the key didn't turn up for two days. Then one of the twins

found the turkey gobbler trying to swallow it. It has been washed since," she hastened to assure Hotchkiss,

"You don't think he locked the door himself and threw the key out of the window?" the little man asked.

"The windows are covered with mosquito netting, nailed on. The mister blamed it on the children, and it

might have been Obadiah. He's the quiet kind, and you never know what he's about."

"He's about to strangle, isn't he," McKnight remarked lazily, "or is that Obadiah?"

Mrs. Carter picked the boy up and inverted him, talking amiably all the time. "He's always doing it," she said,

giving him a shake. "Whenever we miss anything we look to see if Obadiah's black in the face." She gave

him another shake, and the quarter I had given him shot out as if blown from a gun. Then we prepared to go

>From where I stood I could look into the cheery farm kitchen, where Alison West and I had eaten our al

fresco breakfast. I looked at the table with mixed emotions, and then, gradually, the meaning of something on

it penetrated my mind. Still in its papers, evidently just opened, was a hat box, and protruding over the edge

On the plea that I wished to ask Mrs. Carter a few more questions, I let the others go on. I watched them

down the flagstone walk; saw McKnight stop and examine the gateposts and saw, too, the quick glance he

She threw up her hands with a quick gesture of surrender. "I've done all I could," she exclaimed. "She won't

I went eagerly up the ladderlike stairs, to the ragcarpeted hall. Two doors were open, showing interiors of

four poster beds and high bureaus. The door of the room over the parlor was almost closed. I hesitated in the

hallway: after all, what right had I to intrude on her? But she settled my difficulty by throwing open the door

"I I beg your pardon, Miss West," I stammered. "It has just occurred to me that I am unpardonably rude. I

"I don't think so." I turned to go down the stairs again. Then I halted. "The fact is," I said, in an attempt at

justification, "I'm in rather a mess these days, and I'm apt to do irresponsible things. It is not impossible that I

She drew her breath in sharply. "Murder!" she echoed. "Then they have found you after all!"

"I don't regard it as anything more than er inconvenient," I lied. "They can't convict me, you know.

She was not deceived for a moment. She came over to me and stood, both hands on the rail of the stair. "I

know just how grave it is," she said quietly. "My grandfather will not leave one stone unturned, and he can be

terrible terrible. But" she looked directly into my eyes as I stood below her on the stairs "the time may

come soon when I can help you. I'm afraid I shall not want to; I'm a dreadful coward, Mr. Blakeley. But I

"I wish you would let me help you," I said unsteadily. "Let us make it a bargain: each help the other!"

The girl shook her head with a sad little smile. "I am only as unhappy as I deserve to be," she said. And when

I protested and took a step toward her she retreated, with her hands out before her.

"Why don't you ask me all the questions you are thinking?" she demanded, with a catch in her voice. "Oh, I

I looked at her, at the lines around her eyes, at the drawn look about her mouth. Then I held out my hand.

"Afraid!" I said, as she gave me hers. "There is nothing in God's green earth I am afraid of, save of trouble for

you. To ask questions would be to imply a lack of faith. I ask you nothing. Some day, perhaps, you will come

The next moment I was out in the golden sunshine: the birds were singing carols of joy: I walked dizzily

through rainbowcolored clouds, past the twins, cherubs now, swinging on the gate. It was a new world into

McKnight and Hotchkiss were sauntering slowly down the road as I caught up with them. As usual, the little

"The idea is this," he was saying, his brows knitted in thought, "if a lefthanded man, standing in the position

of the man in the picture, should jump from a car, would he be likely to sprain his right ankle? When a

righthanded man prepares for a leap of that kind, my theory is that he would hold on with his right hand,

"I imagine, although I don't know," interrupted McKnight, "that a man either ambidextrous or onearmed,

"Anyhow," I interposed, "what difference does it make whether Sullivan used one hand or the other? One pair

"My dear sir," he expostulated, "don't you understand what bearing this has on the case? How was the

"Very well," he retorted, "and what then? Your heart lies under your fifth intercostal space, and to reach it a

"But, gentleman, the point of entrance for the stiletto was below the heart, striking up! As Harrington lay with

his head toward the engine, a person in the aisle must have used the left hand."

McKnight's eyes sought mine and he winked at me solemnly as I unostentatiously transferred the hat I was

carrying to my right hand. Long training has largely counterbalanced heredity in my case, but I still pitch ball,

play tennis and carve with my left hand. But Hotchkiss was too busy with his theories to notice me.

We were only just in time for our train back to Baltimore, but McKnight took advantage of a second's delay

"I want to express my admiration for you," he said beamingly. "Ability of your order is thrown away here.

McKnight glanced at me, gave the agent's hand a final shake, and climbed on board. But I knew perfectly that

He was very silent on the way home. Hotchkiss, too, had little to say. He was reading over his notes intently,

stopping now and then to make a penciled addition. Just before we left the train Richey turned to me. "I

"Curious, her locking that fellow in," he reflected. "You may depend on it, there was a good reason for it all.

"Only yesterday you were the suspicious one," he retorted, and we lapsed into strained silence.

It was late when we got to Washington. One of Mrs. Klopton's small tyrannies was exacting punctuality at

meals, and, like several other things, I respected it. There are always some concessions that should be made

So, as my dinner hour of seven was long past, McKnight and I went to a little restaurant down town where

they have a very decent way of fixing chicken a la King. Hotchkiss had departed, economically bent, for a

"I want to think some things over," he said in response to my invitation to dinner, "and, anyhow, there's no

The day had been hot, and the first floor diningroom was sultry in spite of the palms and fans which

It was crowded, too, with a typical summer night crowd, and, after sitting for a few minutes in a sweltering

corner, we got up and went to the smaller diningroom upstairs. Here it was not so warm, and we settled

Over in a corner half a dozen boys on their way back to school were ragging a perspiring waiter, a proceeding

so exactly to McKnight's taste that he insisted on going over to join them. But their table was full, and

Not far from us a very stout, middleaged man, apoplectic with the heat, was elephantinely jolly for the

benefit of a boredlooking girl across the table from him, and at the next table a newspaper woman ate alone,

the last edition propped against the waterbottle before her, her hat, for coolness, on the corner of the table. It

I looked over the room casually, while McKnight ordered the meal. Then my attention was attracted to the

table next to ours. Two people were sitting there, so deep in conversation that they did not notice us. The

woman's face was hidden under her hat, as she traced the pattern of the cloth mechanically with her fork. But

the man's features stood out clear in the light of the candles on the table. It was Bronson!

"He shows the strain, doesn't he?" McKnight said, holding up the wine list as if he read from it. "Who's the

When the chicken came, I still found myself gazing now and then at the abstracted couple near me. Evidently

the subject of conversation was unpleasant. Bronson was eating little, the woman not at all. Finally he got up,

The woman sat still for a moment; then, with an apparent resolution to make the best of it, she began slowly

But the quarrel had taken away her appetite, for the mixture in our chafingdish was hardly ready to serve

I caught my first glimpse of her face then, and I confess it startled me. It was the tall, stately woman of the

Ontario, the woman I had last seen cowering beside the road, rolling pebbles in her hand, blood streaming

from a cut over her eye. I could see the scar now, a little affair, about an inch long, gleaming red through its

And then, quite unexpectedly, she turned and looked directly at me. After a minute's uncertainty, she bowed,

letting her eyes rest on mine with a calmly insolent stare. She glanced at McKnight for a moment, then back

"Ontario." I formed it with my lips rather than said it. McKnight's eyebrows went up and he looked with

I ate little after that. The situation was rather bad for me, I began to see. Here was a woman who could, if she

wished, and had any motive for so doing, put me in jail under a capital charge. A word from her to the police,

Then, too, she could say that she had seen me, just after the wreck, with a young woman from the murdered

It is not surprising, then, that I ate little. The woman across seemed in no hurry to go. She loitered over a

demitasse, and that finished, sat with her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, looking darkly at the

The fun at the table where the college boys sat began to grow a little noisy; the fat man, now a purplish shade,

ambled away behind his slim companion; the newspaper woman pinned on her businesslike hat and stalked

It was a relief when the meal was over. We got our hats and were about to leave the room, when a waiter

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "but the lady at the table near the window, the lady in black, sir, would like

I looked down between the rows of tables to where the woman sat alone, her chin still resting on her hand,

"I'll have to go," I said to McKnight hurriedly. "She knows all about that affair and she'd be a bad enemy."

"I don't like her lamps," McKnight observed, after a glance at her. "Better jolly her a little. Goodby."

She smiled rather oddly as I drew near, and pointed to the chair Bronson had vacated.

"Sit down, Mr. Blakeley," she said, "I am going to take a few minutes of your valuable time."

"Certainly." I sat down opposite her and glanced at a cuckoo clock on the wall. "I am sorry, but I have only a

few minutes. If you " She laughed a little, not very pleasantly, and opening a small black fan covered with

"A bargain?" I asked incredulously. "You have a second advantage of me. You know my name" I paused

"I am Mrs. Conway," she said, and flicked a crumb off the table with an overmanicured finger.

The name was scarcely a surprise. I had already surmised that this might be the woman whom rumor credited

as being Bronson's commonlaw wife. Rumor, I remembered, had said other things even less pleasant, things

"We met last under less fortunate circumstances," she was saying. "I have been fit for nothing since that

"I still have it," I said, with a lame attempt at jocularity; "but to have escaped at all was a miracle. We have

"I suppose we have," she said carelessly, "although sometimes I doubt it." She was looking somberly toward

"Yes, I sent for you." She roused herself and sat erect. "Now, Mr. Blakeley, have you found those papers?"

"Mr. Blakeley," she said quietly, "I think we can lay aside all subterfuge. In the first place let me refresh your

mind about a few things. The Pittsburg police are looking for the survivors of the car Ontario; there are three

that I know of yourself, the young woman with whom you left the scene of the wreck, and myself. The

"At the time of the collision you were in rather a hole," she went on, looking at me with a disagreeable smile.

"You were, if I remember, accused of a rather atrocious crime. There was a lot of corroborative evidence, was

there not? I seem to remember a dirk and the murdered man's pocketbook in your possession, and a few

"You remember also," I said quickly, "that a man disappeared from the car, taking my clothes, papers and

"I remember that you said so." Her tone was quietly insulting, and I bit my lip at having been caught. It was

"You have missed one calculation," I said coldly, "and that is, the discovery of the man who left the train."

"You have found him?" She bent forward, and again I regretted my hasty speech. "I knew it; I said so."

"We are going to find him," I asserted, with a confidence I did not feel. "We can produce at any time proof

that a man left the Flier a few miles beyond the wreck. And we can find him, I am positive."

"But you have not found him yet?" She was clearly disappointed. "Well, so be it. Now for our bargain. You

"How flattering you are!" she said. "Very well. Now for the premises. You take to Pittsburg four notes held

by the Mechanics' National Bank, to have Mr. Gilmore, who is ill, declare his indorsement of them forged.

"On the journey back to Pittsburg two things happen to you: you lose your clothing, your valise and your

papers, including the notes, and you are accused of murder. In fact, Mr. Blakeley, the circumstances were

"Now for the bargain." She leaned over and lowered her voice. "A fair exchange, you know. The minute you

put those four notes in my hand that minute the blow to my head has caused complete forgetfulness as to

the events of that awful morning. I am the only witness, and I will be silent. Do you understand? They will

"But," I said, striving to gain time, "I haven't the notes. I can't give you what I haven't got."

"You have had the case continued," she said sharply. "You expect to find them. Another thing," she added

slowly, watching my face, "if you don't get them soon, Bronson will have them. They have been offered to

"But," I said, bewildered, "what is your object in coming to me? If Bronson will get them anyhow "

She shut her fan with a click and her face was not particularly pleasant to look at.

"You are dense," she said insolently. "I want those papers for myself, not for Andy Bronson."

"Then the idea is," I said, ignoring her tone, "that you think you have me in a hole, and that if I find those

papers and give them to you you will let me out. As I understand it, our friend Bronson, under those

"The notes would be of no use to you for a limited length of time," I went on, watching her narrowly. "If they

are not turned over to the state's attorney within a reasonable time there will have to be a nolle pros that is,

"No, I'll not do it. I expect to come across the notes any time now, and I expect just as certainly to turn them

She got up suddenly, pushing her chair back with a noisy grating sound that turned many eyes toward us.

"You're more of a fool than I thought you," she sneered, and left me at the table.

I confess I was staggered. The people at the surrounding tables, after glancing curiously in my direction,

I got my hat and went out in a very uncomfortable frame of mind. That she would inform the police at once

of what she knew I never doubted, unless possibly she would give a day or two's grace in the hope that I

I reviewed the situation as I waited for a car. Two passed me going in the opposite direction, and on the first

one I saw Bronson, his hat over his eyes, his arms folded, looking moodily ahead. Was it imagination? or was

As the car rolled on I found myself smiling. The alert little man was for all the world like a terrier, ever on the

I found McKnight at the Incubator, with his coat off, working with enthusiasm and a manicure file over the

"It's the worst horn I ever ran across," he groaned, without looking up, as I came in. "The blanketyblank

"Sounds like croup," I suggested. "My sisterinlaw uses camphor and goose greese for it; or how about a

But McKnight never sees any jokes but his own. He flung the horn clattering into a corner, and collapsed

"Now," I said, "if you're through manicuring that horn, I'll tell you about my talk with the lady in black."

Stogie came in, bringing a few additions to our comfort. When he went out I told my story.

"You must remember," I said, "that I had seen this woman before the morning of the wreck. She was buying

her Pullman ticket when I did. Then the next morning, when the murder was discovered, she grew hysterical,

and I gave her some whisky. The third and last time I saw her, until tonight, was when she crouched beside

McKnight slid down in his chair until his weight rested on the small of his back, and put his feet on the big

"It is rather a facer," he said. "It's really too good a situation for a commonplace lawyer. It ought to be

dramatized. You can't agree, of course; and by refusing you run the chance of jail, at least, and of having

Alison brought into publicity, which is out of the question. You say she was at the Pullman window when

"But listen, man." McKnight was growing excited. "What do you figure out of this? The Conway woman

knows you have taken the notes to Pittsburg. The probabilities are that she follows you there, on the chance

"Nothing doing during the trip over or during the day in Pittsburg; but she learns the number of your berth as

you buy it at the Pullman ticket office in Pittsburg, and she thinks she sees her chance. No one could have

"Now, I figure it out this way: She wanted those notes desperately does still not for Bronson, but to hold

over his head for some purpose. In the night, when everything is quiet, she slips behind the curtains of lower

"Now keep still and listen. She gropes cautiously around in the darkness, finally discovering the wallet under

He was leaning forward, excitedly, and I could almost see the gruesome tragedy he was depicting.

"She draws out the wallet. Then, perhaps she remembers the alligator bag, and on the possibility that the

notes are there, instead of in the pocketbook, she gropes around for it. Suddenly, the man awakes and

clutches at the nearest object, perhaps her neck chain, which breaks. She drops the pocketbook and tries to

"It is all in silence; the man is still stupidly drunk. But he holds her in a tight grip. Then the tragedy. She must

get away; in a minute the car will be aroused. Such a woman, on such an errand, does not go without some

sort of a weapon, in this case a dagger, which, unlike a revolver, is noiseless.

"With a quick thrust she's a big woman and a bold one she strikes. Possibly Hotchkiss is right about the

lefthand blow. Harrington may have held her right hand, or perhaps she held the dirk in her left hand as she

groped with her right. Then, as the man falls back, and his grasp relaxes, she straightens and attempts to get

away. The swaying of the car throws her almost into your berth, and, trembling with terror, she crouches

behind the curtains of lower ten until everything is still. Then she goes noiselessly back to her berth."

"It seems to fit partly, at least," I said, "In the morning when she found that the crime had been not only

fruitless, but that she had searched the wrong berth and killed the wrong man; when she saw me emerge,

unhurt, just as she was bracing herself for the discovery of my dead body, then she went into hysterics. You

"It really seems a tenable theory. But, like the Sullivan theory, there are one or two things that don't agree

with the rest. For one thing, how did the remainder of that chain get into Alison West's possession?"

"We'll admit that," I said; "and I'm sure I hope so. Then how did the murdered man's pocketbook get into

"Now what's the use," asked McKnight aggrievedly, "of my building up beautiful theories for you to pull

down? We'll take it to Hotchkiss. Maybe he can tell from the bloodstains if the murderer's finger nails were

"Hotchkiss is no fool," I said warmly. "Under all his theories there's a good hard layer of common sense. And

we must remember, Rich, that neither of our theories includes the woman at Doctor Van Kirk's hospital, that

the charming picture you have just drawn does not account for Alison West's connection with the case, or for

the bits of telegram in the Sullivan fellow's pajamas pocket. You are like the man who put the clock together;

"Oh, go home," said McKnight disgustedly. "I'm no Edgar Allan Poe. What's the use of coming here and

"Listen to this," he said. "It is a Hawaiian song about a fat lady, oh, ignorant one! and how she fell off her

But for all the lightness of the words, the voice that followed me down the stairs was anything but cheery.

"There was a Kanaka in Balu did dwell, Who had for his daughter a monstrous fat girl

he sang in his clear tenor. I paused on the lower floor and listened. He had stopped singing as abruptly as he

I had not been home for thirtysix hours, since the morning of the preceding day. Johnson was not in sight,

and I let myself in quietly with my latchkey. It was almost midnight, and I had hardly settled myself in the

library when the bell rang and I was surprised to find Hotchkiss, much out of breath, in the vestibule.

"Why, come in, Mr. Hotchkiss," I said. "I thought you were going home to go to bed."

"So I was, so I was." He dropped into a chair beside my reading lamp and mopped his face. "And here it is

almost midnight, and I'm wider awake than ever. I've seen Sullivan, Mr. Blakeley."

"Something of the sort. When I left you at the door of the restaurant, I turned and almost ran into a plain

clothes man from the central office. I know him pretty well; once or twice he has taken me with him on

"You know him, too, probably. It was the man Arnold, the detective whom the state's attorney has had

"Well, he stopped me at once; said he'd been on the fellow's tracks since early morning and had had no time

for luncheon. Bronson, it seems, isn't eating much these days. I at once jotted down the fact, because it argued

Hotchkiss ignored me. "Well, Arnold had some reason for thinking that Bronson would try to give him the

slip that night, so he asked me to stay around the private entrance there while he ran across the Street and got

something to eat. It seemed a fair presumption that, as he had gone there with a lady, they would dine

"Sir," he said pompously, "I have given you a wrong estimate of Wilson Budd Hotchkiss if you think that a

question of dinner would even obtrude itself on his mind at such a time as this."

He was a frail little man, and tonight he looked pale with heat and overexertion.

"Well," I said, "I'm not going to see you drop on the floor from exhaustion. Just wait a minute."

I went back to the pantry, only to be confronted with rows of locked doors and empty dishes. Downstairs, in

the basement kitchen, however, I found two unattractive looking cold chops, some dry bread and a piece of

cake, wrapped in a napkin, and from its surreptitious and generally hangdog appearance, destined for the

coachman in the stable at the rear. Trays there were none everything but the chairs and tables seemed under

The luncheon was not attractive in appearance, but Hotchkiss ate his cold chops and gnawed at the crusts as

"I had been there only a few minutes," he said, with a chop in one hand and the cake in the other, "when

Bronson rushed out and cut across the street. He's a tall man, Mr. Blakeley, and I had had work keeping

close. It was a relief when he jumped on a passing car, although being well behind, it was a hard run for me

"Once on the car, we simply rode from one end of the line to the other and back again. I suppose he was

passing the time, for he looked at his watch now and then, and when I did once get a look at us face it made

I had brought Mr. Hotchkiss a glass of wine, and he was looking better. He stopped to finish it, declining with

"About nine o'clock or a little later he got off somewhere near Washington Circle. He went along one of the

residence streets there, turned to his left a square or two, and rang a bell. He had been admitted when I got

there, but I guessed from the appearance of the place that it was a boardinghouse.

"I waited a few minutes and rang the bell. When a maid answered it, I asked for Mr. Sullivan. Of course there

"I said I was sorry; that the man I was looking for was a new boarder. She was sure there was no such boarder

in the house; the only new arrival was a man on the third floor she thought his name was Stuart.

"She wanted to show me up, but I said it was unnecessary. So after telling me it was the bedroom and

"I met a couple of men on the stairs, but neither of them paid any attention to me. A boardinghouse is the

"When I got to the third story, I took out a bunch of keys and posted myself by a door near the ones the girl

had indicated. I could hear voices in one of the front rooms, but could not understand what they said.

"There was no violent dispute, but a steady hum. Then Bronson jerked the door open. If he had stepped into

the hall he would have seen me fitting a key into the door before me. But he spoke before he came out.

"'You're acting like a maniac,' he said. 'You know I can get those things some way; I'm not going to threaten

"'It would be no use,' the other man said. 'I tell you, I haven't seen the notes for ten days.'

"'But you will,' Bronson said savagely. 'You're standing in your own way, that's all. If you're holding out

"'I couldn't take it if it was for a million,' said the man inside the room. 'I'd do it, I expect, if I could. The best

"After a couple of minutes I knocked at the door, and a tall man about your size, Mr. Blakeley, opened it. He

was very blond, with a smooth face and blue eyes what I think you would call a handsome man.

"'I beg your pardon for disturbing you,' I said. 'Can you tell me which is Mr. Johnson's room? Mr. Francis

"I thanked him and left, but I had had a good look at him, and I think I'd know him readily any place."

I sat for a few minutes thinking it over. "But what did he mean by saying he hadn't seen the notes for ten

"I think he was lying," Hotchkiss reflected. "Bronson hasn't reached his figure."

"It's a big advance, Mr. Hotchkiss, and I appreciate what you have done more than I can tell you," I said.

"And now, if you can locate any of my property in this fellow's room, we'll send him up for larceny, and at

least have him where we can get at him. I'm going to Cresson tomorrow, to try to trace him a little from

there. But I'll be back in a couple of days, and we'll begin to gather in these scattered threads."

"That's it," he said. "That's what we want to do, Mr. Blakeley. We'll gather up the threads ourselves; if we let

the police in too soon, they'll tangle it up again. I'm not vindictive by nature; but when a fellow like Sullivan

not only commits a murder, but goes to all sorts of trouble to put the burden of guilt on an innocent man I say

"Who else?" He looked over his glasses at me with the air of a man whose mental attitude is unassailable.

Then I told him at length of my encounter with Bronson in the restaurant, of the bargain proposed by Mrs.

Conway, and finally of McKnight's new theory. But, although he was impressed, he was far from convinced.

"It's a very vivid piece of imagination," he said drily; "but while it fits the evidence as far as it goes, it doesn't

go far enough. How about the stains in lower seven, the dirk, and the wallet? Haven't we even got motive in

"Pooh," he said shortly. "Perhaps, like yourself, Sullivan wore glasses with a chain. Our not finding them

And there I made an error; half confidences are always mistakes. I could not tell of the broken chain in Alison

It was one o'clock when Hotchkiss finally left. We had by that time arranged a definite course of action

Hotchkiss to search Sullivan's rooms and if possible find evidence to have him held for larceny, while I went

Strangely enough, however, when I entered the train the following morning, Hotchkiss was already there. He

"I changed my plans, you see," he said, bustling his newspaper aside for me. "It is no discredit to your

intelligence, Mr. Blakeley, but you lack the professional eye, the analytical mind. You legal gentlemen call a

I slept most of the way to Cresson, to the disgust of the little detective. Finally he struck up an acquaintance

with a kindlyfaced old priest on his way home to his convent school, armed with a roll of dance music and

surreptitious bundles that looked like boxes of candy. From scraps of conversation I gleaned that there had

been mysterious occurrences at the convent, ending in the theft of what the reverend father called vaguely,

"a quantity of undermuslins." I dropped asleep at that point, and when I roused a few moments later, the

"With this window bolted, and that one inaccessible, and if, as you say, the er garments were in a tub here

at X, then, as you hold the key to the other door, I think you said the convent dog did not raise any

"I'll tell you what to do," Hotchkiss said cheerfully, leaning forward, "look around a little yourself before you

call in the police. Somnambulism is a queer thing. It's a question whether we are most ourselves sleeping or

waking. Ever think of that? Live a saintly life all day, prayers and matins and all that, and the subconscious

mind hikes you out of bed at night to steal undermuslins! Subliminal theft, so to speak. Better examine the

I dozed again. When I wakened Hotchkiss sat alone, and the priest, from a corner, was staring at him dazedly,

It was raining when we reached Cresson, a winddriven rain that had forced the agent at the newsstand to

close himself in, and that beat back from the rails in parallel lines of white spray. As he went up the main

street, Hotchkiss was cheerfully oblivious of the weather, of the threatening dusk, of our generally draggled

condition. My draggled condition, I should say, for he improved every moment, his eyes brighter, his ruddy

face ruddier, his collar newer and glossier. Sometime, when it does not encircle the little man's neck, I shall

I was growing steadily more depressed: I loathed my errand and its necessity. I had always held that a man

who played the spy on a woman was beneath contempt. Then, I admit I was afraid of what I might learn. For

a time, however, this promised to be a negligible quantity. The streets of the straggling little mountain town

had been cleanwashed of humanity by the downpour. Windows and doors were inhospitably shut, and from

around an occasional drawn shade came narrow strips of light that merely emphasized our gloom. When

"I don't know where you are going," I snarled, "I don't care. But I'm going to get under cover inside of ten

I ducked into the next shelter, which happened to be the yawning entrance to a livery stable, and shook

myself, dog fashion. Hotchkiss wiped his collar with his handkerchief. It emerged gleaming and unwilted.

"This will do as well as any place," he said, raising his voice above the rattle of the rain. "Got to make a

I sat down on the usual chair without a back, just inside the door, and stared out at the darkening street. The

whole affair had an air of unreality. Now that I was there, I doubted the necessity, or the value, of the

journey. I was wet and uncomfortable. Around me, with Cresson as a center, stretched an irregular

circumference of mountain, with possibly a tenmile radius, and in it I was to find the residence of a woman

whose first name I did not know, and a man who, so far, had been a purely chimerical person.

Hotchkiss had penetrated the steaming interior of the cave, and now his voice, punctuated by the occasional

"Something light will do," he was saying. "A runabout, perhaps." He came forward rubbing his hands,

followed by a thin man in overalls. "Mr. Peck says," he began, "this is Mr. Peck of Peck and Peck, says

that the place we are looking for is about seven miles from the town. It's clearing, isn't it?"

"It is not," I returned savagely. "And we don't want a runabout, Mr. Peck. What we require is hermetically

sealed diving suit. I suppose there isn't a machine to be had?" Mr. Peck gazed at me, in silence: machine to

him meant other things than motors. "Automobile," I supplemented. His face cleared.

"None but private affairs. I can give you a good buggy with a rubber apron. Mike, is the doctor's horse in?"

I am still uncertain as to whether the rawboned roan we took out that night over the mountains was the

doctor's horse or not. If it was, the doctor may be a good doctor, but he doesn't know anything about a horse.

"Six Curtises in the town and vicinity," he said. "Sort of family name around here. One of them is telegraph

operator at the station. Person we are looking for is was a wealthy widow with a brother named Sullivan!

"You see," Hotchkiss went on, "three people, in one party, took the train here that night, Miss West, Mrs.

Curtis and Sullivan. The two women had the drawingroom, Sullivan had lower seven. What we want to find

out is just who these people were, where they came from, if Bronson knew them, and how Miss West became

I fell into gloom after that. The roan was led unwillingly into the weather, Hotchkiss and I in eclipse behind

the blanket. The liveryman stood in the doorway and called directions to us. "You can't miss it," he finished.

"Got the name over the gate anyhow, 'The Laurels.' The servants are still there: leastways, we didn't bring

them down." He even took a step into the rain as Hotchkiss picked up the lines. "If you're going to settle the

estate," he bawled, "don't forget us, Peck and Peck. A halfbushel of name and a bushel of service.

Hotchkiss could not drive. Born a clerk, he guided the roan much as he would drive a bad pen. And the roan

spattered through puddles and splashed ink mud, that is until I was in a frenzy of irritation.

"What are we going to say when we get there?" I asked after I had finally taken the reins in my one useful

hand. "Get out there at midnight and tell the servants we have come to ask a few questions about the family?

The roan fell just then, and we had to crawl out and help him up. By the time we had partly unharnessed him

our matches were gone, and the small bicycle lamp on the buggy was wavering only too certainly. We were

covered with mud, panting with exertion, and even Hotchkiss showed a disposition to be surly. The rain,

which had lessened for a time, came on again, the lightning flashes doing more than anything else to reveal

Another mile saw us, if possible, more despondent. The water in our clothes had had time to penetrate: the

roan had sprained his shoulder, and drew us along in a series of convulsive jerks. And then through the

rainspattered window of the blanket, I saw a light. It was a small light, rather yellow, and it lasted perhaps

thirty seconds. Hotchkiss missed it, and was inclined to doubt me. But in a couple of minutes the roan

hobbled to the side of the road and stopped, and I made out a break in the pines and an arched gate.

It was a small gate, too narrow for the buggy. I pulled the horse into as much shelter as possible under the

trees, and we got out. Hotchkiss tied the beast and we left him there, head down against the driving rain,

It was a long walk. The path bent and twisted, and now and then we lost it. We were climbing as we went.

Oddly there were no lights ahead, although it was only ten o'clock, not later. Hotchkiss kept a little ahead of

me, knocking into trees now and then, but finding the path in half the time I should have taken. Once, as I felt

my way around a tree in the blackness, I put my hand unexpectedly on his shoulder, and felt a shudder go

"What do you expect me to do?" he protested, when I remonstrated. "Hang out a red lantern? What was that?

We both stood peering into the gloom. The sharp patter of the rain on leaves had ceased, and from just ahead

there came back to us the stealthy padding of feet in wet soil. My hand closed on Hotchkiss' shoulder, and we

listened together, warily. The steps were close by, unmistakable. The next flash of lightning showed nothing

moving: the house was in full view now, dark and uninviting, looming huge above a terrace, with an Italian

garden at the side. Then the blackness again. Somebody's teeth were chattering: I accused Hotchkiss but he

"Although I'm not very comfortable, I'll admit," he confessed; "there was something breathing right at my

"Nonsense!" I took his elbow and steered him in what I made out to be the direction of the steps of the Italian

garden. "I saw a deer just ahead by the last flash; that's what you heard. By Jove, I hear wheels."

We paused to listen and Hotchkiss put his hand on something close to us. "Here's your deer," he said.

As we neared the house the sense of surveillance we had had in the park gradually left us. Stumbling over

flower beds, running afoul of a sundial, groping our way savagely along hedges and thorny banks, we

It was then that Hotchkiss fell over one of the two stone urns which, with tall boxwood trees in them,

mounted guard at each side of the door. He didn't make any attempt to get up. He sat in a puddle on the brick

floor of the terrace and clutched his leg and swore softly in Government English.

The occasional relief of the lightning was gone. I could not see an outline of the house before me. We had no

matches, and an instant's investigation showed that the windows were boarded and the house closed.

Hotchkiss, still recumbent, was ascertaining the damage, tenderly peeling down his stocking.

"Upon my soul," he said finally, "I don't know whether this moisture is blood or rain. I think I've broken a

"Blood is thicker than water," I suggested. "Is it sticky? See if you can move your toes."

There was a pause: Hotchkiss moved his toes. By that time I had found a knocker and was making the night

hideous. But there was no response save the wind that blew sodden leaves derisively in our faces. Once

Hotchkiss declared he heard a windowsash lifted, but renewed violence with the knocker produced no

"There's only one thing to do," I said finally. "I'll go back and try to bring the buggy up for you. You can't

Hotchkiss sat back in his puddle and said he didn't think he could stir, but for me to go back to town and

leave him, that he didn't have any family dependent on him, and that if he was going to have pneumonia he

had probably got it already. I left him there, and started back to get the horse.

If possible, it was worse than before. There was no lightning, and only by a miracle did I find the little gate

again. I drew a long breath of relief, followed by another, equally long, of dismay. For I had found the

hitching strap and there was nothing at the end of it! In a lull of the wind I seemed to hear, far off, the eager

thud of stablebound feet. So for the second time I climbed the slope to the Laurels, and on the way I thought

I struck the house at a new angle, for I found a veranda, destitute of chairs and furnishings, but dry and

evidently roofed. It was better than the terrace, and so, by groping along the wall, I tried to make my way to

Hotchkiss. That was how I found the open window. I had passed perhaps six, all closed, and to have my hand

grope for the next one, and to find instead the soft drapery of an inner curtain, was startling, to say the least.

I found Hotchkiss at last around an angle of the stone wall1 and told him that the horse was gone. He was

disconcerted, but not abased; maintaining that it was a new kind of knot that couldn't slip and that the horse

must have chewed the halter through! He was less enthusiastic than I had expected about the window.

"It looks uncommonly like a trap," he said. "I tell you there was some one in the park below when we were

coming up. Man has a sixth sense that scientists ignore a sense of the nearness of things. And all the time

"Couldn't see you," I maintained; "I can't see you now. And your sense of contiguity didn't tell you about that

In the end, of course, he consented to go with me. He was very lame, and I helped him around to the open

window. He was full of moral courage, the little man: it was only the physical in him that quailed. And as we

"If it is a trap," he whispered, "I have two arms to your one, and, besides, as I said before, life holds much for

When he found I was going first he was rather hurt, but I did not wait for his protests. I swung my feet over

the sill and dropped. I made a clutch at the windowframe with my good hand when I found no floor under

my feet, but I was too late. I dropped probably ten feet and landed with a crash that seemed to split my

eardrums. I was thoroughly shaken, but in some miraculous way the bandaged arm had escaped injury.

"For Heaven's sake," Hotchkiss was calling from above, "have you broken your back?"

"No," I returned, as steadily as I could, "merely driven it up through my skull. This is a staircase. I'm coming

It was eerie work, but I accomplished it finally, discovering, not without mishap, a room filled with more

tables than I had ever dreamed of, tables that seemed to waylay and strike at me. When I had got a window

Our first thought was for a light. The same laborious investigation that had landed us where we were,

revealed that the house was lighted by electricity, and that the plant was not in operation. By accident I

stumbled across a tabouret with smoking materials, and found a half dozen matches. The first one showed us

the magnitude of the room we stood in, and revealed also a brass candlestick by the open fireplace, a

candlestick almost four feet high, supporting a candle of similar colossal proportions. It was Hotchkiss who

discovered that it had been recently lighted. He held the match to it and peered at it over his glasses.

"Within ten minutes," he announced impressively, this candle has been burning. Look at the wax! And the

"Perhaps it's the damp weather," I ventured, moving a little nearer to the circle of light. A gust of wind came

in just then, and the flame turned over on its side and threatened demise. There was something almost

ridiculous in the haste with which we put down the window and nursed the flicker to life.

The peculiarly ghostlike appearance of the room added to the uncanniness of the situation. The furniture

was swathed in white covers for the winter; even the pictures wore shrouds. And in a niche between two

windows a bust on a pedestal, similarly wrapped, one arm extended under its winding sheet, made a most

In the light of the candle we surveyed each other, and we were objects for mirth. Hotchkiss was taking off his

sodden shoes and preparing to make himself comfortable, while I hung my muddy raincoat over the ghost in

the corner. Thus habited, he presented a rakish but distinctly more comfortable appearance.

"When these people built," Hotchkiss said, surveying the huge dimensions of the room, "they must have

It seemed to be a livingroom, although Hotchkiss remarked that it was much more like a dead one. It was

probably fifty feet long and twentyfive feet wide. It was very high, too, with a domed ceiling, and a gallery

ran around the entire room, about fifteen feet above the floor. The candle light did not penetrate beyond the

dim outlines of the gallery rail, but I fancied the wall there hung with smaller pictures.

Hotchkiss had discovered a fire laid in the enormous fireplace, and in a few minutes we were steaming before

a cheerful blaze. Within the radius of its light and heat, we were comfortable again. But the brightness merely

emphasized the gloom of the ghostly corners. We talked in subdued tones, and I smoked, a box of Russian

cigarettes which I found in a table drawer. We had decided to stay all night, there being nothing else to do. I

suggested a game of doubledummy bridge, but did not urge it when my companion asked me if it resembled

euchre. Gradually, as the ecclesiastical candle paled in the firelight, we grew drowsy. I drew a divan into the

cheerful area, and stretched myself out for sleep. Hotchkiss, who aid the pain in his leg made him wakeful,

I have no idea how much time had passed when something threw itself violently on my chest. I roused with a

start and leaped to my feet, and a large Angora cat fell with a thump to the floor. The fire was still bright, and

there was an odor of scorched leather through the room, from Hotchkiss' shoes. The little detective was sound

asleep, his dead pipe in his fingers. The cat sat back on its haunches and wailed.

The curtain at the door into the hallway bellied slowly out into the room and fell again. The cat looked toward

it and opened its mouth for another howl. I thrust at it with my foot, but it refused to move. Hotchkiss stirred

The cat was standing at my feet, staring behind me. Apparently it was following with its eyes, an object

unseen to me, that moved behind me. The tip of its tail waved threateningly, but when I wheeled I saw

I took the candle and made a circuit of the room. Behind the curtain that had moved the door was securely

closed. The windows were shut and locked, and everywhere the silence was absolute. The cat followed me

majestically. I stooped and stroked its head, but it persisted in its uncanny watching of the corners of the

When I went back to my divan, after putting a fresh log on the fire, I was reassured. I took the precaution, and

smiled at myself for doing it, to put the fire tongs within reach of my hand. But the cat would not let me

sleep. After a time I decided that it wanted water, and I started out in search of some, carrying the candle

without the stand. I wandered through several rooms, all closed and dismantled, before I found a small

lavatory opening off a billiard room. The cat lapped steadily, and I filled a glass to take back with me. The

candle flickered in a sickly fashion that threatened to leave me there lost in the wanderings of the many

hallways, and from somewhere there came an occasional violent puff of wind. The cat stuck by my feet, with

the hair on its back raised menacingly. I don't like cats; there is something psychic about them.

Hotchkiss was still asleep when I got back to the big room. I moved his boots back from the fire, and

trimmed the candle. Then, with sleep gone from me, I lay back on my divan and reflected on many things: on

my idiocy in coming; on Alison West, and the fact that only a week before she had been a guest in this very

house; on Richey and the constraint that had come between us. From that I drifted back to Alison, and to the

The emptiness, the stillness were oppressive. Once I heard footsteps coming, rhythmical steps that neither

hurried nor dragged, and seemed to mount endless staircases without coming any closer. I realized finally that

I had not quite turned off the tap, and that the lavatory, which I had circled to reach, must be quite close.

The cat lay by the fire, its nose on its folded paws, content in the warmth and companionship. I watched it

idly. Now and then the green wood hissed in the fire, but the cat never batted an eye. Through an unshuttered

window the lightning flashed. Suddenly the cat looked up. It lifted its head and stared directly at the gallery

above. Then it blinked, and stared again. I was amused. Not until it had got up on its feet, eyes still riveted on

the balcony, tail waving at the tip, the hair on its back a bristling brush, did I glance casually over my head.

>From among the shadows a face gazed down at me, a face that seemed a fitting tenant of the ghostly room

below. I saw it as plainly as I might see my own face in a mirror. While I stared at it with horrified eyes, the

apparition faded. The rail was there, the Bokhara rug still swung from it, but the gallery was empty.

I jumped up and seized the fire tongs. The cat's wail had roused Hotchkiss, who was wideawake at once. He

took in my offensive attitude, the tongs, the direction of my gaze, and needed nothing more. As he picked up

the candle and darted out into the hall, I followed him. He made directly for the staircase, and part way up he

turned off to the right through a small door. We were on the gallery itself; below us the fire gleamed

cheerfully, the cat was not in sight. There was no sign of my ghostly visitant, but as we stood there the

Bokhara rug, without warning, slid over the railing and fell to the floor below.

"Neither that is, I don't know. I didn't notice anything but the eyes," I muttered. "They were looking a hole

in me. If you'd seen that cat you would realize my state of mind. That was a traditional graveyard yowl."

"I don't think you saw anything at all," he lied cheerfully. "You dozed off, and the rest is the natural result of

Nevertheless, he examined the Bokhara carefully when we went down, and when I finally went to sleep he

was reading the only book in sight Elwell on Bridge. The first rays of daylight were coming mistily into the

room when he roused me. He had his finger on his lips, and he whispered sibilantly while I tried to draw on

"I think we have him," he said triumphantly. "I've been looking around some, and I can tell you this much.

Just before we came in through the window last night, another man came. Only he did not drop, as you did.

He swung over to the stair railing, and then down. The rail is scratched. He was long enough ahead of us to

go into the diningroom and get a decanter out of the sideboard. He poured out the liquor into a glass, left the

decanter there, and took the whisky into the library across the hall. Then he broke into a desk, using a paper

"Good Lord, Hotchkiss," I exclaimed; "why, it may have been Sullivan himself! Confound your theories

"It was Sullivan," Hotchkiss returned imperturbably. "And he has not gone. His boots are by the library fire."

"He probably had a dozen pairs where he could get them," I scoffed. "And while you and I sat and slept, the

"Softly, softly, my friend," Hotchkiss said, as I stamped into my other shoe. "I did not say he was gone. Don't

jump at conclusions. It is fatal to reasoning. As a matter of fact, he didn't relish a night on the mountains any

more than we did. After he had unintentionally frightened you almost into paralysis, what would my

gentleman naturally do? Go out in the storm again? Not if I know the Alicesitbythefire type. He went

We had no weapons. I am aware that the traditional hero is always armed, and that Hotchkiss as the low

comedian should have had a revolver that missed fire. As a fact, we had nothing of the sort. Hotchkiss carried

the fire tongs, but my sense of humor was too strong for me; I declined the poker.

"All we want is a little peaceable conversation with him," I demurred. "We can't brain him first and converse

with him afterward. And anyhow, while I can't put my finger on the place, I think your theory is weak. If he

wouldn't run a hundred miles through fire and water to get away from us, then he is not the man we want."

Hotchkiss, however, was certain. He had found the room and listened outside the door to the sleeper's heavy

breathing, and so we climbed past luxurious suites, revealed in the deepening daylight, past long vistas of hall

and boudoir. And we were both badly winded when we got there. It was a tower room, reached by narrow

"It is partly good luck, but not all," he panted in a whisper. "If we had persisted in the search last night, he

He gave a mighty rap at the door with the fire tongs, and stood expectant. Certainly he was right; some one

"Hello! Hello there!" Hotchkiss bawled. "You might as well come out. We won't hurt you, if you'll come

"Tell him we represent the law," I prompted. "That's the customary thing, you know."

But at that moment a bullet came squarely through the door and flattened itself with a sharp pst against the

wall of the tower staircase. We ducked unanimously, dropped back out of range, and Hotchkiss retaliated

with a spirited bang at the door with the tongs. This brought another bullet. It was a ridiculous situation.

Under the circumstances, no doubt, we should have retired, at least until we had armed ourselves, but

"Break the lock," I suggested, and Hotchkiss, standing at the side, out of range, retaliated for every bullet by a

smashing blow with the tongs. The shots ceased after a half dozen, and the door was giving, slowly. One of

us on each side of the door, we were ready for almost any kind of desperate resistance. As it swung open

Hotchkiss poised the tongs; I stood, bent forward, my arm drawn back for a blow.

There was not a sound. Finally, at the risk of losing an eye which I justly value, I peered around and into the

room. There was no desperado there: only a freshfaced, tremblinglipped servant, sitting on the edge of her

We were victorious, but no conquered army ever beat such a retreat as ours down the tower stairs and into the

refuge of the livingroom. There, with the door closed, sprawled on the divan, I went from one spasm of

mirth into another, becoming sane at intervals, and suffering relapse again every time I saw Hotchkiss'

disgruntled countenance. He was pacing the room, the tongs still in his hand, his mouth pursed with irritation.

"When you have finished cackling," he said with dignity, "I wish to justify my position. Do you think the er

young woman upstairs put a pair of number eight boots to dry in the library last night? Do you think she

"Moreover, if she had been the person who peered at you over the gallery railing last night, don't you

suppose, with her er belligerent disposition, she could have filled you as full of lead as a window weight?"

"I do," I assented. "It wasn't Alicesitbythefire. I grant you that. Then who was it?"

Hotchkiss felt certain that it had been Sullivan, but I was not so sure. Why would he have crawled like a thief

into his own house? If he had crossed the park, as seemed probable, when we did, he had not made any

attempt to use the knocker. I gave it up finally, and made an effort to conciliate the young woman in the

We had heard no sound since our spectacular entrance into her room. I was distinctly uncomfortable as, alone

this time, I climbed to the tower staircase. Reasoning from before, she would probably throw a chair at me. I

"Hello up there," I said, in as debonair a manner as I could summon. "Good morning. Wie geht es bei ihen?"

"Bon jour, mademoiselle," I tried again. This time there was a movement of some sort from above, but

"I we want to apologize for rousing you so er unexpectedly this morning," I went on. "The fact is, we

wanted to talk to you, and you you were hard to waken. We are travelers, lost in your mountains, and we

She came to the door then. I could feel that she was investigating the top of my head from above. "Is Mr.

Sullivan with you?" she asked. It was the first word from her, and she was not sure of her voice.

"No. We are alone. If you will come down and look at us you will find us two perfectly harmless people,

whose horse curses on him departed without leave last night and left us at your gate."

She relaxed somewhat then and came down a step or two. "I was afraid I had killed somebody," she said.

When she saw that I was comparatively young and lacked the earmarks of the highwayman, she was greatly

relieved. She was inclined to fight shy of Hotchkiss, however, for some reason. She gave us a breakfast of a

sort, for there was little in the house, and afterward we telephoned to the town for a vehicle. While Hotchkiss

examined scratches and replaced the Bokhara rug, I engaged Jennie in conversation.

"Can you tell me," I asked, "who is managing the estate since Mrs. Curtis was killed?"

"No, sir. There was only the two, and some think Mr. Sullivan was killed as well as his sister."

"No. Look here, Jennie; I am all that I should be. You'll have to believe that. And I'm in a bad position

through no fault of my own. I want you to answer some questions. If you will help me, I will do what I can

"My home is in Pittsburg," she said, "and I haven't enough money to get there. They hadn't paid any wages

"Very well," I returned. "I'll send you back to Pittsburg, Pullman included, if you will tell me some things I

She agreed eagerly. Outside the window Hotchkiss was bending over, examining footprints in the drive.

"Yes. She was the granddaughter of a wealthy man in Pittsburg. My aunt has been in his family for twenty

"Do you think he did marry her?" I could not keep the excitement out of my voice.

"They came from somewhere in the south. I have heard Mrs. Curtis say her mother was a Cuban. I don't

know much about them, but Mr. Sullivan had a wicked temper, though he didn't look it. Folks say big,

I hesitated about further questioning. Critical as my position was, I could not pry deeper into Alison West's

affairs. If she had got into the hands of adventurers, as Sullivan and his sister appeared to have been, she was

safely away from them again. But something of the situation in the car Ontario was forming itself in my

mind: the incident at the farmhouse lacked only motive to be complete. Was Sullivan, after all, a rascal or a

criminal? Was the murderer Sullivan or Mrs. Conway? The lady or the tiger again.

"I hope Miss West was not hurt?" she asked. "We liked her, all of us. She was not like Mrs. Curtis."

I wanted to say that she was not like anybody in the world. Instead "She escaped with some bruises," I said.

She waited for more questions, but none coming, she went to the door. Then she closed it softly and came

"She was killed instantly, I believe. The body was not recovered. But I have reasons for believing that Mr.

"I knew it," she said. "I I think he was here the night before last. That is why I went to the tower room. I

believe he would kill me if he could." As nearly as her round and comely face could express it, Jennie's

expression was tragic at that moment. I made a quick resolution, and acted on it at once.

"You are not entirely frank with me, Jennie," I protested. "And I am going to tell you more than I have. We

"I was on the wrecked train, in the same car with Mrs. Curtis, Miss West and Mr. Sullivan. During the night

there was a crime committed in that car and Mr. Sullivan disappeared. But he left behind him a chain of

circumstantial evidence that involved me completely, so that I may, at any time, be arrested."

Apparently she did not comprehend for a moment. Then, as if the meaning of my words had just dawned on

Her hands clenched involuntarily, and she shrank back. "A woman?" She could scarcely form her words.

Her effort to retain her selfcontrol was pitiful. Then she broke down and cried, her head on the back of a tall

"It was my fault," she said wretchedly, "my fault, I should not have sent them the word."

After a few minutes she grew quiet. She seemed to hesitate over something, and finally determined to say it.

"You will understand better, sir, when I say that I was raised in the Harrington family. Mr. Harrington was

So it had been the tiger, not the lady! Well, I had held to that theory all through. Jennie suddenly became a

valuable person; if necessary she could prove the connection between Sullivan and the murdered man, and

show a motive for the crime. I was triumphant when Hotchkiss came in. When the girl had produced a

photograph of Mrs. Sullivan, and I had recognized the bronzehaired girl of the train, we were both well

Jennie either had nothing more to say, or feared she had said too much. She was evidently uneasy before

Hotchkiss. I told her that Mrs. Sullivan was recovering in a Baltimore hospital, but she already knew it, from

some source, and merely nodded. She made a few preparations for leaving, while Hotchkiss and I compared

notes, and then, with the cat in her arms, she climbed into the trap from the town. I sat with her, and on the

"If you see Mrs. Sullivan," she advised, "and she is conscious, she probably thinks that both her husband and

The cat crawled over on to my knee, and rubbed its bead against my hand invitingly. Jennie stared at the

undulating line of the mountain crests, a colossal sun against a blue ocean of sky. "Yes, she cares," she said

softly. "Women are made like that. They say they are cats, but Peter there in your lap wouldn't come back and

lick your hand if you kicked him. If if you have to tell her the truth, be as gentle as you can, sir. She has

been good to me that's why I have played the spy here all summer. It's a thankless thing, spying on people."

Hotchkiss and I arrived in Washington late that evening, and, rather than arouse the household, I went to the

club. I was at the office early the next morning and admitted myself. McKnight rarely appeared before half

after ten, and our modest office force some time after nine. I looked over my previous day's mail and waited,

with such patience as I possessed, for McKnight. In the interval I called up Mrs. Klopton and announced that

I would dine at home that night. What my household subsists on during my numerous absences I have never

discovered. Tea, probably, and crackers. Diligent search when I have made a midnight arrival, never reveals

anything more substantial. Possibly I imagine it, but the announcement that I am about to make a journey

always seems to create a general atmosphere of depression throughout the house, as though Euphemia and

Eliza, and Thomas, the stableman, were already subsisting, in imagination, on Mrs. Klopton's meager fare.

So I called her up and announced my arrival. There was something unusual in her tone, as though her throat

was tense with indignation. Always shrill, her elderly voice rasped my ear painfully through the receiver.

"I have changed the butcher, Mr. Lawrence," she announced portentously. "The last roast was a pound short,

As I said before, I can always tell from the voice in which Mrs. Klopton conveys the most indifferent matters,

if something of real significance has occurred. Also, through long habit, I have learned how quickest to bring

"You are pessimistic this morning," I returned. "What's the matter, Mrs. Klopton? You haven't used that tone

since Euphemia baked a pie for the iceman. What is it now? Somebody poison the dog?"

"The house has been broken into, Mr. Lawrence," she said. "I have lived in the best families, and never have I

stood by and seen what I saw yesterday every bureau drawer opened, and my my most sacred belongings

"Police!" she sniffed. "Police! It was the police that did it two detectives with a search warrant. I I

wouldn't dare tell you over the telephone what one of them said when he found the whisky and rock candy for

"Confound the cough medicine!" I was frantic. "Did they take anything else? Were they in my

"Yes. I threatened to sue them, and I told them what you would do when you came back. But they wouldn't

listen. They took away that black sealskin bag you brought home from Pittsburg with you!"

I knew then that my hours of freedom were numbered. To have found Sullivan and then, in support of my

case against him, to have produced the bag, minus the bit of chain, had been my intention. But the police had

the bag, and, beyond knowing something of Sullivan's history, I was practically no nearer his discovery than

before. Hotchkiss hoped he had his man in the house off Washington Circle, but on the very night he had

seen him Jennie claimed that Sullivan had tried to enter the Laurels. Then suppose we found Sullivan and

proved the satchel and its contents his? Since the police had the bit of chain it might mean involving Alison

in the story. I sat down and buried my face in my hands. There was no escape. I figured it out despondingly.

Against me was the evidence of the survivors of the Ontario that I had been accused of the murder at the

time. There had been bloodstains on my pillow and a hidden dagger. Into the bargain, in my possession had

In my favor was McKnight's theory against Mrs. Conway. She had a motive for wishing to secure the notes,

she believed I was in lower ten, and she had collapsed at the discovery of the crime in the morning.

Against both of these theories, I accuse a purely chimerical person named Sullivan, who was not seen by any

of the survivors save one, Alison, whom I could not bring into the case. I could find a motive for his

murdering his fatherinlaw, whom he hated, but again I would have to drag in the girl.

Outside the office force was arriving. They were comfortably ignorant of my presence, and over the transom

floated scraps of dialogue and the stenographer's gurgling laugh. McKnight had a relative, who was reading

law with him, in the intervals between calling up the young women of his acquaintance. He came in singing,

and the office boy joined in with the uncertainty of voice of fifteen. I smiled grimly. I was too busy with my

own troubles to find any joy in opening the door and startling them into silence. I even heard, without

I hoped McKnight would arrive before the arrest occurred. There were many things to arrange. But when at

last, impatient of his delay, I telephoned, I found he had been gone for more than an hour. Clearly he was not

coming directly to the office, and with such resignation as I could muster I paced the floor and waited.

I felt more alone than I have ever felt in my life. "Born an orphan," as Richey said, I had made my own way,

carved out myself such success as had been mine. I had built up my house of life on the props of law and

order, and now some unknown hand had withdrawn the supports, and I stood among ruins.

I suppose it is the maternal in a woman that makes a man turn to her when everything else fails. The eternal

boy in him goes to have his wounded pride bandaged, his tattered selfrespect repaired. If he loves the

The longing to see Alison, always with me, was stronger than I was that morning. It might be that I would not

see her again. I had nothing to say to her save one thing, and that, under the cloud that hung over me, I did

not dare to say. But I wanted to see her, to touch her hand as only a lonely man can crave it, I wanted the

comfort of her, the peace that lay in her presence. And so, with every step outside the door a threat, I

She was gone! The disappointment was great, for my need was great. In a fury of revolt against the scheme of

things, I heard that she had started home to Richmond but that she might still be caught at the station.

To see her had by that time become an obsession. I picked up my hat, threw open the door, and, oblivious of

the shock to the office force of my presence, followed so immediately by my exit, I dashed out to the

elevator. As I went down in one cage I caught a glimpse of Johnson and two other men going up in the next. I

hardly gave them a thought. There was no hansom in sight, and I jumped on a passing car. Let come what

I saw her. I flung into the station, saw that it was empty empty, for she was not there. Then I hurried back

to the gates. She was there, a familiar figure in blue, the very gown in which I always thought of her, the one

she had worn when, Heaven help me I had kissed her, at the Carter farm. And she was not alone. Bending

They did not see me, and I was glad of it. After all, it had been McKnight's game first. I turned on my heel

and made my way blindly out of the station. Before I lost them I turned once and looked toward them,

standing apart from the crowd, absorbed in each other. They were the only two people on earth that I cared

about, and I left them there together. Then I went back miserably to the office and awaited arrest.

Strangely enough, I was not disturbed that day. McKnight did not appear at all. I sat at my desk and

transacted routine business all afternoon, working with feverish energy. Like a man on the verge of a critical

illness or a hazardous journey, I cleared up my correspondence, paid bills until I had writer's cramp from

signing checks, read over my will, and paid up my life insurance, made to the benefit of an elderly sister of

my mother's. I no longer dreaded arrest. After that morning in the station, I felt that anything would be a

relief from the tension. I went home with perfect openness, courting the warrant that I knew was waiting, but

I was not molested. The delay puzzled me. The early part of the evening was uneventful. I read until late,

with occasional lapses, when my book lay at my elbow, and I smoked and thought. Mrs. Klopton closed the

house with ostentatious caution, about eleven, and hung around waiting to enlarge on the outrageousness of

"One would think," she concluded pompously, one foot in the hall, "that you were something you oughtn't to

"I'm not sure that I didn't, Mrs. Klopton," I said wearily. "Somebody did, the general verdict seems to point

She stared at me in speechless indignation. Then she flounced out. She came back once to say that the paper

predicted cooler weather, and that she had put a blanket on my bed, but, to her disappointment, I refused to

At half past eleven McKnight and Hotchkiss came in. Richey has a habit of stopping his car in front of the

house and honking until some one comes out. He has a code of signals with the horn, which I never

remember. Two long and a short blast mean, I believe, "Send out a box of cigarettes," and six short blasts,

which sound like a police call, mean "Can you lend me some money?" Tonight I knew something was up,

They came into the library, and Hotchkiss wiped his collar until it gleamed. McKnight was aggressively

"Not pinched yet!" he exclaimed. "What do you think of that for luck! You always were a fortunate devil,

"Yes," I assented, with some bitterness, "I hardly know how to contain myself for joy sometimes. I suppose

you know" to Hotchkiss "that the police were here while we were at Cresson, and that they found the bag

"Things are coming to a head," he said thoughtfully "unless a little plan that I have in mind " he hesitated.

"I hope so; I am pretty nearly desperate," I said doggedly. "I've got a mental toothache, and the sooner it's

"Tut, tut," said McKnight, "think of the disgrace to the firm if its senior member goes up for life, or " he

"Although jail isn't so bad, anyhow," he finished, "there are fellows that get the habit and keep going back

and going back." He looked at his watch, and I fancied his cheerfulness was strained. Hotchkiss was

He was choked at my indifference. "It is a masterpiece," he said, with enthusiasm. "I reread it today."

"Then I inspected the rooms in the house off Washington Circle. I I made some discoveries, Mr. Blakeley.

For one thing, our man there is lefthanded." He looked around for our approval. "There was a small cushion

"Somebody may have twisted the cushion," I objected, but he looked hurt, and I desisted.

"There is only one discrepancy," he admitted, "but it troubles me. According to Mrs. Carter, at the farmhouse,

our man wore gaudy pajamas, while I found here only the most severely plain nightshirts."

"The buttons were there," the amateur detective answered gravely, "but the buttonhole next the top one was

"I am convinced of one thing," Hotchkiss went on, clearing his throat, "the papers are not in that room. Either

A sound on the street made both my visitors listen sharply. Whatever it was it passed on, however. I was

growing curious and the restraint was telling on McKnight. He has no talent for secrecy. In the interval we

discussed the strange occurrence at Cresson, which lost nothing by Hotchkiss' dry narration.

"And so," he concluded, "the woman in the Baltimore hospital is the wife of Henry Sullivan and the daughter

"Joy, probably," McKnight put in. "Is that clock right, Lawrence? Never mind, it doesn't matter. By the way,

"Sure thing. Said she had heard great things of us, and wanted us to handle her case against the railroad."

"I would like to know what she is driving at," I reflected. "Is she trying to reach me through you?"

Richey's flippancy is often a cloak for deeper feeling. He dropped it now. "Yes," he said, "she's after the

notes, of course. And I'll tell you I felt like a poltroon whatever that may be when I turned her down. She

stood by the door with her face white, and told me contemptuously that I could save you from a murder

charge and wouldn't do it. She made me feel like a cur. I was just as guilty as if I could have obliged her. She

"Nonsense," I said, as easily as I could. Hotchkiss had gone to the window. "She was excited. There are no

Richey put his hand on my shoulder. "We've been together too long to let any 'reasons' or 'unreasons' come

between us, old man," he said, not very steadily. Hotchkiss, who had been silent, here came forward in his

"Mr. Blakeley," he began, "by Mr. McKnight's advice we have arranged a little interview here tonight. If all

has gone as I planned, Mr. Henry Pinckney Sullivan is by this time under arrest. Within a very few minutes

"I wanted to talk to him before be was locked up," Richey explained. "He's clever enough to be worth

knowing, and, besides, I'm not so cocksure of his guilt as our friend the Patch on the Seat of Government. No

murderer worthy of the name needs six different motives for the same crime, beginning with robbery, and

We were all silent for a while. McKnight stationed himself at a window, and Hotchkiss paced the floor

expectantly. "It's a great day for modern detective methods," he chirruped. "While the police have been

guarding houses and standing with their mouths open waiting for clues to fall in and choke them, we have

The doorbell rang, followed immediately by sounds of footsteps in the hall. McKnight threw the door open,

and Hotchkiss, raised on his toes, flung out his arm in a gesture of superb eloquence.

Through the open doorway came a tall, blond fellow, clad in light gray, wearing tan shoes, and followed

But McKnight was doubled over the library table in silent convulsions of mirth, and I was almost as bad.

Little Hotchkiss stood up, his important attitude finally changing to one of chagrin, while the blond man

"Stuart," he said sternly, "there are two very serious things we have learned about you. First, you jab your

scarf pins into your cushion with your left hand, which is most reprehensible; second, you wear er

nightshirts, instead of pajamas. Worse than that, perhaps, we find that one of them has a buttonhole torn out

Stuart was bewildered. He looked from McKnight to me, and then at the crestfallen Hotchkiss.

"I haven't any idea what it's all about," he said. "I was arrested as I reached my boardinghouse tonight,

after the theater, and brought directly here. I told the officer it was a mistake."

Poor Hotchkiss tried bravely to justify the fiasco. "You can not deny," he contended, "that Mr. Andrew

"No, I don't deny it," he said, "but there was nothing criminal about it, on my part, at least. Mr. Bronson has

been trying to induce me to secure the forged notes for him. But I did not even know where they were."

"And you were not on the wrecked Washington Flier?" persisted Hotchkiss. But McKnight interfered.

"There is no use trying to put the other man's identity on Stuart, Mr. Hotchkiss," he protested. "He has been

our confidential clerk for six years, and has not been away from the office a day for a year. I am afraid that

the beautiful fabric we have pieced out of all these scraps is going to be a crazy quilt." His tone was facetious,

I paid the constable for his trouble, and he departed. Stuart, still indignant, left to go back to Washington

Circle. He shook hands with McKnight and myself magnanimously, but he hurled a look of utter hatred at

"As far as I can see," said McKnight dryly, "we're exactly as far along as we were the day we met at the

"We have one thing that may be of value," I suggested. "He is the husband of a bronzehaired woman at Van

Kirk's hospital, and it is just possible we may trace him through her. I hope we are not going to lose your

He roused at that to feeble interest, "I oh, of course not, if you still care to have me, I I was wondering

about the man who just went out, Stuart, you say? I told his landlady tonight that he wouldn't need the

We cheered him as best we could, and I suggested that we go to Baltimore the next day and try to find the

real Sullivan through his wife. He left sometime after midnight, and Richey and I were alone.

He drew a chair near the lamp and lighted a cigarette, and for a time we were silent. I was in the shadow, and

I sat back and watched him. It was not surprising, I thought, that she cared for him: women had always loved

him, perhaps because he always loved them. There was no disloyalty in the thought: it was the lad's nature to

give and crave affection. Only I was different. I had never really cared about a girl before, and my life had

been singularly loveless. I had fought a lonely battle always. Once before, in college, we had both laid

ourselves and our callow devotions at the feet of the same girl. Her name was Dorothy I had forgotten the

rest but I remembered the sequel. In a spirit of quixotic youth I had relinquished my claim in favor of

Richey and had gone cheerfully on my way, elevated by my heroic sacrifice to a somber, whitehot

martyrdom. As is often the case, McKnight's first words showed our parallel lines of thought.

"I say, Lollie," he asked, "do you remember Dorothy Browne?" Browne, that was it!

"Nothing," he said. "I was thinking about her. That's all. You remember you were crazy about her, and

"I got out," I said with dignity, "because you declared you would shoot yourself if she didn't go with you to

"Oh, why yes, I recall now!" he mimicked. He tossed his cigarette in the general direction of the hearth and

got up. We were both a little conscious, and he stood with his back to me, fingering a Japanese vase on the

"I was thinking," he began, turning the vase around, "that, if you feel pretty well again, and and ready to

take hold, that I should like to go away for a week or so. Things are fairly well cleaned up at the office."

"Do you mean you are going to Richmond?" I asked, after a scarcely perceptible pause. He turned and

"No. That's off, Lollie. The Sieberts are going for a week's cruise along the coast. I the hot weather has

I lighted a cigarette and offered him the box, but he refused. He was looking haggard and suddenly tired. I

could not think of anything to say, and neither could he, evidently. The matter between us lay too deep for

"Martin says a month, and she will be all right," I returned, in the same tone. He picked up his hat, but he had

"The Seiberts are not going for a couple of days," he said, "and if you want a day or so off to go down to

"Perhaps I shall," I returned, as indifferently as I could. "Not going yet, are you?"

"Yes. It is late." He drew in his breath as if he had something more to say, but the impulse passed. "Well,

The next moment the outer door slammed and I heard the engine of the Cannonball throbbing in the street.

Then the quiet settled down around me again, and there in the lamplight I dreamed dreams. I was going to see

Suddenly the idea of being shut away, even temporarily, from so great and wonderful a world became

intolerable. The possibility of arrest before I could get to Richmond was hideous, the night without end.

I made my escape the next morning through the stable back of the house, and then, by devious dark and

winding ways, to the office. There, after a conference with Blobs, whose features fairly jerked with

excitement, I doublelocked the door of my private office and finished off some imperative work. By ten

o'clock I was free, and for the twentieth time I consulted my train schedule. At five minutes after ten, with

McKnight not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at the door, the double rap we had agreed upon, and on being

admitted slipped in and quietly closed the door behind him. His eyes were glistening with excitement, and a

purple dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly villainous and stealthy expression.

"They're here," he said, "two of 'em, and that crazy Stuart wasn't on, and said you were somewhere in the

"This way," said Blobs, in a husky undertone, and, darting into a lavatory, threw open a door that I had

always supposed locked. Thence into a back hall piled high with boxes and past the presses of a bookbindery

Greatly to Blobs' disappointment, there was no pursuit. I was exhilarated but out of breath when we emerged

"Great sport, isn't it? I panted, dropping a dollar into his palm, inked to correspond with his face. "Regular

"Gimme two dollars more and I'll drop 'em down the elevator shaft," he suggested ferociously. I left him

there with his bloodthirsty schemes, and started for the station. I had a tendency to look behind me now and

then, but I reached the station unnoticed. The afternoon was hot, the train rolled slowly along, stopping to

pant at sweltering stations, from whose roofs the heat rose in waves. But I noticed these things objectively,

not subjectively, for at the end of the journey was a girl with blue eyes and dark brown hair, hair that could

had I not seen it? hang loose in bewitching tangles or be twisted into little coils of delight.

I telephoned as soon as I reached my hotel, and I had not known how much I had hoped from seeing her until

I learned that she was out of town. I hung up the receiver, almost dizzy with disappointment, and it was fully

five minutes before I thought of calling up again and asking if she was within telephone reach. It seemed she

Sammy Forbes! It was a name to conjure with just then. In the old days at college I had rather flouted him,

but now I was ready to take him to my heart. I remembered that he had always meant well, anyhow, and that

"By the fumes of gasoline!" he said, when I told him who I was. "Blakeley, the Fount of Wisdom against

Whereupon he proceeded to urge me to come down to the Shack, and to say that I was an agreeable surprise,

because four times in two hours youths had called up to ask if Alison West was stopping with him, and to

suggest that they had a vacant day or two. "Oh Miss West!" I shouted politely. There was a buzzing on the

line. "Is she there?" Sam had no suspicions. Was not I in his mind always the Great Unkissed? which

sounds like the Great Unwashed and is even more of a reproach. He asked me down promptly, as I had

"Nonsense," he said. "Bring yourself. The lady that keeps my boardinghouse is calling to me to insist. You

remember Dorothy, don't you, Dorothy Browne? She says unless you have lost your figure you can wear my

clothes all right. All you need here is a bathing suit for daytime and a dinner coat for evening."

"It sounds cool," I temporized. "If you are sure I won't put you out very well, Sam, since you and your wife

are good enough. I have a couple of days free. Give my love to Dorothy until I can do it myself."

Sam met me himself and drove me out to the Shack, which proved to be a substantial house overlooking the

water. On the way he confided to me that lots of married men thought they were contented when they were

merely resigned, but that it was the only life, and that Sam, Junior, could swim like a duck. Incidentally, he

said that Alison was his wife's cousin, their respective grandmothers having, at proper intervals, married the

"I say she's worried, and I stick to it," he said, as he threw the lines to a groom and prepared to get out. "You

know her, and she's the kind of girl you think you can read like a book. But you can't; don't fool yourself.

Take a good look at her at dinner, Blake; you won't lose your head like the other fellows and then tell me

He went ponderously up the steps, for Sam had put on weight since I knew him. At the door he turned

around. "Do you happen to know the MacLure's at Seal Harbor?" he asked irrelevantly, but Mrs. Sam came

into the hall just then, both hands out to greet me, and, whatever Forbes had meant to say, he did not pick up

"We are having tea in here," Dorothy said gaily, indicating the door behind her. "Tea by courtesy, because I

think tea is the only beverage that isn't represented. And then we must dress, for this is hop night at the club."

"Which is as great a misnomer as the tea," Sam put in, ponderously struggling out of his linen driving coat.

He was still gurgling over this as he took me upstairs. He showed me my room himself, and then began the

fruitless search for evening raiment that kept me home that night from the club. For I couldn't wear Sam's

"I won't do it, Sam," I said, when I had draped his dresscoat on me toga fashion. "Who am I to have clothing

to spare, like this, when many a poor chap hasn't even a cellar door to cover him. I won't do it; I'm selfish, but

"Lord," he said, wiping his face, "how you've kept your figure! I can't wear a belt any more; got to have

He reflected over his grievance for some time, sitting on the side of the bed. "You could go as you are," he

said finally. "We do it all the time, only tonight happens to be the annual something or other, and " he

trailed off into silence, trying to buckle my belt around him. "A good six inches," he sighed. "I never get into

a hansom cab any more that I don't expect to see the horse fly up into the air. Well, Allie isn't going either.

She turned down Granger this afternoon, the Annapolis fellow you met on the stairs, pigeonbreasted chap

He got up heavily and went to the door. "Granger is leaving," he said, "I may be able to get his dinner coat for

"Fairly well," I said cautiously. "Not as well as I would like to. I dined with her last week in Washington.

Forbes touched the bell instead of going out, and told the servant who answered to see if Mr. Granger's

suitcase had gone. If not, to bring it across the hail. Then he came back to his former position on the bed.

"You see, we feel responsible for Allie near relation and all that," he began pompously. "And we can't talk

to the people here at the house all the men are in love with her, and all the women are jealous. Then

"I can tell you," he went on, "because you don't lose your head over every pretty face although Allie is

more than that, of course. But about a month ago she went away to Seal Harbor, to visit Janet MacLure.

"She came home to Richmond yesterday, and then came down here Allie, I mean. And yesterday afternoon

Dolly had a letter from Janet something about a second man and saying she was disappointed not to have

had Alison there, that she had promised them a two weeks' visit! What do you make of that? And that isn't the

worst. Allie herself wasn't in the room, but there were eight other women, and because Dolly had put

belladonna in her eyes the night before to see how she would look, and as a result couldn't see anything

nearer than across the room, some one read the letter aloud to her, and the whole story is out. One of the cats

told Granger and the boy proposed to Allie today, to show her he didn't care a tinker's dam where she had

"Good boy!" I said, with enthusiasm. I liked the Granger fellow since he was out of the running. But Sam was

"Blake," he said, "if I didn't know you for what you are, I'd say you were interested there yourself."

Being so near her, under the same roof, with even the tie of a dubious secret between us, was making me

"I interested!" I retorted, holding him by the shoulders. "There isn't a word in your vocabulary to fit my

condition. I am an island in a sunlit sea of emotion, Sam, a an empty place surrounded by longing a "

"An empty place surrounded by longing!" he retorted. "You want your dinner, that's what's the matter with

I shut the door on him then. He seemed suddenly sordid. Dinner, I thought! Although, as matter of fact, I

made a very fair meal when, Granger's suitcase not having gone, in his coat and some other man's trousers, I

was finally fit for the amenities. Alison did not come down to dinner, so it was clear she would not go over to

the clubhouse dance. I pled my injured arm and a ficticious, vaguely located sprain from the wreck, as an

excuse for remaining at home. Sam regaled the table with accounts of my distrust of women, my one love

affair with Dorothy; to which I responded, as was expected, that only my failure there had kept me single

all these years, and that if Sam should be mysteriously missing during the bathing hour tomorrow, and so

And when the endless meal was over, and yards of white veils had been tied over pounds of hair or is it,

too, bought by the yard? and some eight ensembles with their abject complements had been packed into three

automobiles and a trap, I drew a long breath and faced about. I had just then only one object in life to find

Alison, to assure her of my absolute faith and confidence in her, and to offer my help and my poor self, if she

She was not easy to find. I searched the lower floor, the verandas and the grounds, circumspectly. Then I ran

into a little English girl who turned out to be her maid, and who also was searching. She was concerned

because her mistress had had no dinner, and because the tray of food she carried would soon be cold. I took

the tray from her, on the glimpse of something white on the shore, and that was how I met the Girl again.

She was sitting on an overturned boat, her chin in her hands, staring out to sea. The soft tide of the bay

lapped almost at her feet, and the draperies of her white gown melted hazily into the sands. She looked like a

wraith, a despondent phantom of the sea, although the adjective is redundant. Nobody ever thinks of a

cheerful phantom. Strangely enough, considering her evident sadness, she was whistling softly to herself,

over and over, some dreary little minor air that sounded like a Bohemian dirge. She glanced up quickly when

I made a misstep and my dishes jingled. All considered, the tray was out of the picture: the sea, the misty

starlight, the girl, with her beauty even the sad little whistle that stopped now and then to go bravely on

again, as though it fought against the odds of a trembling lip. And then I came, accompanied by a tray of little

"Timeo Danaos what's the rest of it?" I asked, tendering my offering. "You didn't have any dinner, you

know." I sat down beside her. "See, I'll be the table. What was the old fairy tale? 'Little goat bleat: little table

"We never do meet like other people, do we?" she asked. "We really ought to shake hands and say how are

"I don't want to meet you like other people, and I suppose you always think of me as wearing the other

fellow's clothes," I returned meekly. "I'm doing it again: I don't seem to be able to help it. These are Granger's

"Oh, it's so ridiculous," she said, "and you have never seen me when I was not eating! It's too prosaic!"

"Which reminds me that the chicken is getting cold, and the ice warm," I suggested. "At the time, I thought

there could be no place better than the farmhouse kitchen but this is. I ordered all this for something I want

"How alliterative you are!" she said, trying to be flippant. "You are not to say anything until I have had my

But she ate nothing, after all, and pretty soon I put the tray down in the sand. I said little; there was no hurry.

We were together, and time meant nothing against that agelong wash of the sea. The air blew her hair in

small damp curls against her face, and little by little the tide retreated, leaving our boat an oasis in a waste of

"If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year Do you suppose, the walrus said, that they could get

she threw at me once when she must have known I was going to speak. I held her hand, and as long as I

merely held it she let it lie warm in mine. But when I raised it to my lips, and kissed the soft, open palm, she

"Not that, please," she protested, and fell to whistling softly again, her chin in her hands. "I can't sing," she

said, to break an awkward pause, "and so, when I'm fidgety, or have something on my mind, I whistle. I hope

"I love it," I asserted warmly. I did; when she pursed her lips like that I was mad to kiss them.

"I saw you at the station," she said' suddenly. "You you were in a hurry to go." I did not say anything, and

after a pause she drew a long breath. "Men are queer, aren't they?" she said, and fell to whistling again.

After a while she sat up as if she had made a resolution. "I am going to confess something," she announced

suddenly. "You said, you know, that you had ordered all this for something you you wanted to say to me.

But the fact is, I fixed it all came here, I mean, because I knew you would come, and I had something to

tell you. It was such a miserable thing I needed the accessories to help me out."

"I don't want to hear anything that distresses you to tell," I assured her. "I didn't come here to force your

confidence, Alison. I came because I couldn't help it." She did not object to my use of her name.

"Have you found your papers?" she asked, looking directly at me for almost the first time.

"They haven't had any opportunity," I equivocated. "You needn't distress yourself about that, anyhow."

"If you produce Harry Sullivan," she was saying, partly to herself, "and if you could connect him with Mr.

Bronson, and get a full account of why he was on the train, and all that, it it would help, wouldn't it?"

I acknowledged that it would. Now that the whole truth was almost in my possession, I was stricken with the

old cowardice. I did not want to know what she might tell me. The yellow line on the horizon, where the

moon was coming up, was a broken bit of golden chain: my heel in the sand was again pressed on a woman's

"In order that what you might tell me may help me, if it will," I said constrainedly, "it would be necessary,

perhaps, that you tell it to the police. Since they have found the end of the necklace "

"The end of the necklace!" she repeated slowly. "What about the end of the necklace?"

I stared at her. "Don't you remember" I leaned forward "the end of the cameo necklace, the part that was

"Blood," she said dully. "You mean that you found the broken end? And then you had my gold

"I didn't think anything," I hastened to assure her. "I tell you, Alison, I never thought of anything but that you

were unhappy, and that I had no right to help you. God knows, I thought you didn't want me to help you."

She held out her hand to me and I took it between both of mine. No word of love had passed between us, but

I felt that she knew and understood. It was one of the moments that come seldom in a lifetime, and then only

Then she drew her hand away and sat, erect and determined, her fingers laced in her lap. As she talked the

moon came up slowly and threw its bright pathway across the water. Back of us, in the trees beyond the sea

wall, a sleepy bird chirruped drowsily, and a wave, larger and bolder than its brothers, sped up the sand,

"Anything you like." Her voice was almost dreary. "Was it because of anything you are going to tell me that

She told her story evenly, with her eyes on the water, only now and then, when I, too, sat looking seaward, I

thought she glanced at me furtively. And once, in the middle of it, she stopped altogether.

"You don't realize it, probably," she protested, "but you look like a a war god. Your face is horrible."

"I will turn my back, if it will help any," I said stormily, "but if you expect me to look anything but

The story of her meeting with the Curtis woman was brief enough. They had met in Rome first, where Alison

and her mother had taken a villa for a year. Mrs. Curtis had hovered on the ragged edges of society there,

pleading the poverty of the south since the war as a reason for not going out more. There was talk of a

brother, but Alison had not seen him, and after a scandal which implicated Mrs. Curtis and a young attache of

"The women had never liked her, anyhow," she said. "She did unconventional things, and they are very

conventional there. And they said she did not always pay her her gambling debts. I didn't like them. I

thought they didn't like her because she was poor and popular. Then we came home, and I almost forgot

her, but last spring, when mother was not well she had taken grandfather to the Riviera, and it always uses

her up we went to Virginia Hot Springs, and we met them there, the brother, too, this time. His name was

"Mother had a nurse, and I was alone a great deal, and they were very kind to me. I I saw a lot of them. The

brother rather attracted me, partly partly because he did not make love to me. He even seemed to avoid me,

and I was piqued. I had been spoiled, I suppose. Most of the other men I knew had had "

"I know that, too," I said bitterly, and moved away from her a trifle. I was brutal, but the whole story was a

long torture. I think she knew what I was suffering, for she showed no resentment.

"It was early and there were few people around none that I cared about. And mother and the nurse played

cribbage eternally, until I felt as though the little pegs were driven into my brain. And when Mrs. Curtis

arranged drives and picnics, I I slipped away and went. I suppose you won't believe me, but I had never

"What sort of looking chap was Sullivan?" I demanded. I had got up and was pacing back and forward on the

sand. I remember kicking savagely at a bit of watersoaked board that lay in my way.

I drew my shoulders up sharply. I am straight enough, but I was fairly sagging with jealous rage.

"When mother began to get around, somebody told her that I had been going about with Mrs. Curtis and her

brother, and we had a dreadful time. I was dragged home like a bad child. Did anybody ever do that to you?"

"Nobody ever cared. I was born an orphan," I said, with a cheerless attempt at levity. "Go on."

"If Mrs. Curtis knew, she never said anything. She wrote me charming letters, and in the summer, when they

went to Cresson, she asked me to visit her there. I was too proud to let her know that I could not go where I

wished, and so I sent Polly, my maid, to her aunt's in the country, pretended to go to Seal Harbor, and really

I went over and stood in front of her. All the accumulated jealousy of the last few weeks had been fired by

what she told me. If Sullivan had come across the sands just then, I think I would have strangled him with my

"Did you marry him?" I demanded. My voice sounded hoarse and strange in my ears. "That's all I want to

I sat down on the edge of the boat and mopped my hot face. I was heartily ashamed of myself, and mingled

with my abasement was a great relief. If she had not married him, and had not cared for him, nothing else was

"I was sorry, of course, the moment the train had started, but I had wired I was coming, and I could not go

back, and then when I got there, the place was charming. There were no neighbors, but we fished and rode

I put my hand over both of hers, clasped in her lap. "I know," I acknowledged repentantly, "and people do

queer things when it is moonlight. The moon has got me tonight, Alison. If I am a boor, remember that,

Her fingers lay quiet under mine. "And so," she went on with a little sigh, "I began to think perhaps I cared.

But. all the time felt that there was something not quite right. Now and then Mrs. Curtis would say or do

something that gave me a queer start, as if she had dropped a mask for a moment. And there was trouble with

the servants; they were almost insolent. I couldn't understand. I don't know when it dawned on me that the old

Baron Cavalcanti had been right when he said they were not my kind of people. But I wanted to get away,

"Of course, they were not your kind," I cried. "The man was married! The girl Jennie, a housemaid, was a spy

in Mrs. Sullivan's employ. If he had pretended to marry you I would have killed him! Not only that, but the

man he murdered, Harrington, was his wife's father. And I'll see him hang by the neck yet if it takes every

I could have told her so much more gently, have broken the shock for her; I have never been proud of that

evening on the sand. I was alternately a boor and a ruffian like a hurt youngster who passes the blow that

has hurt him on to his playmate, that both may bawl together. And now Alison sat, white and cold, without

"Married!" she said finally, in a small voice. "Why, I don't think it is possible, is it? I I was on my way to

"But you said you didn't care for him!" I protested, my heavy masculine mind unable to jump the gaps in her

story. And then, without the slightest warning, I realized that she was crying. She shook off my hand and

fumbled for her handkerchief, and failing to find it, she accepted the one I thrust into her wet fingers.

Then, little by little, she told me from the handkerchief, a sordid story of a motor trip in the mountains

without Mrs. Curtis, of a lost road and a broken car, and a rainy night when they she and Sullivan, tramped

eternally and did not get home. And of Mrs. Curtis, when they got home at dawn, suddenly grown

conventional and deeply shocked. Of her own proud, halfdisdainful consent to make possible the hackneyed

compromising situation by marrying the rascal, and then of his disappearance from the train. It was so

terrible to her, such a Heavensent relief to me, in spite of my rage against Sullivan, that I laughed aloud. At

"I know it's funny," she said, with a catch in her breath. "When I think that I nearly married a murderer and

"Please don't," I protested unsteadily. "I won't be responsible if you keep on crying like that. I may forget that

I have a capital charge hanging over my head, and that I may be arrested at any moment."

That brought her out of the handkerchief at once. "I meant to be so helpful," she said, "and I've thought of

nothing but myself! There were some things I meant to tell you. If Jennie was what you say, then I

understand why she came to me just before I left. She had been packing my things and she must have seen

what condition I was in, for she came over to me when I was getting my wraps on, to leave, and said, 'Don't

do it, Miss West, I beg you won't do it; you'll be sorry ever after.' And just then Mrs. Curtis came in and

"No. As we went through the station the telegraph operator gave Har Mr. Sullivan a message. He read it on

the platform, and it excited him terribly. He took his sister aside and they talked together. He was white with

either fear or anger I don't know which. Then, when we boarded the train, a woman in black, with beautiful

hair, who was standing on the car platform, touched him on the arm and then drew back. He looked at her and

"Mrs. Curtis and I had the drawingroom. I had a dreadful night, just sleeping a little now and then. I dreaded

to see dawn come. It was to be my weddingday. When we found Harry had disappeared in the night, Mrs.

Curtis was in a frenzy. Then I saw his cigarette case in your hand. I had given it to him. You wore his

clothes. The murder was discovered and you were accused of it! What could I do? And then, afterward, when

I saw him asleep at the farmhouse, I I was panicstricken. I locked him in and ran. I didn't know why he

Some one was calling Alison through a megaphone, from the veranda. It sounded like Sam. "Allee," he

called. "Allee! I'm going to have some anchovies on toast! Allee!" Neither of us heard.

"I wonder," I reflected, "if you would be willing to repeat a part of that story just from the telegram on to

a couple of detectives, say on Monday. If you would tell that, and how the end of your necklace got into the

Alison turned and called through her hands. "Coming in a moment, Sam," she said, and rose. "It must be very

"Don't," I begged her. "Anchovies and juleps and Sam will go on for ever, and I have you such a little time. I

suppose I am only one of a dozen or so, but you are the only girl in the world. You know I love you, don't

Sam was whistling, an irritating bird call, over and over. She pursed her red lips and answered him in kind. It

But Sam's voice came strident through the megaphone. "Be good, you two," he bellowed, "I've got the

binoculars!" And so, under fire, we walked sedately back to the house. My pulses were throbbing the little

swish of her dress beside me on the grass was pain and ecstasy. I had but to put out my hand to touch her, and

Sam, armed with a megaphone and field glasses, bent over the rail and watched us with gleeful malignity.

"Led a club when my partner had doubled notrumps, and she fainted. Damn the heart convention!" he said

Three hours later I went up to bed. I had not seen Alison alone again. The noise was at its height below, and I

glanced down into the garden, still bright in the moonlight. Leaning against a tree, and staring interestedly

That was Saturday night, two weeks after the wreck. The previous five days had been full of swiftfollowing

events the woman in the house next door, the picture in the theater of a man about to leap from the doomed

train, the dinner at the Dallases, and Richey's discovery that Alison was the girl in the case. In quick

succession had come our visit to the Carter place, the finding of the rest of the telegram, my seeing Alison

there, and the strange interview with Mrs. Conway. The Cresson trip stood out in my memory for its

seriocomic horrors and its one real thrill. Then the discovery by the police of the sealskin bag and the bit

of chain; Hotchkiss producing triumphantly Stuart for Sullivan and his subsequent discomfiture; McKnight at

the station with Alison, and later the confession that he was out of the running.

And yet, when I thought it all over, the entire week and its events were two sides of a triangle that was

narrowing rapidly to an apex, a point. And the said apex was at that moment in the drive below my window,

resting his long legs by sitting on a carriage block, and smoking a pipe that made the night hideous. The sense

of the ridiculous is very close to the sense of tragedy. I opened my screen and whistled, and Johnson looked

up and grinned. We said nothing. I held up a handful of cigars, he extended his hat, and when I finally went

to sleep, it was to a soothing breeze that wafted in salt air and a faint aroma of good tobacco. I was

thoroughly tired, but I slept restlessly, dreaming of two detectives with Pittsburg warrants being held up by

Hotchkiss at the point of a splint, while Alison fastened their hands with a chain that was broken and much

too short. I was roused about dawn by a light rap at the door, and, opening it, I found Forbes, in a pair of

trousers and a pajama coat. He was as pleasant as most fleshy people are when they have to get up at night,

and he said the telephone had been ringing for an hour, and he didn't know why somebody else in the

blanketyblank house couldn't have heard it. He wouldn't get to sleep until noon.

As he was palpably asleep on his feet, I left him grumbling and went to the telephone. It proved to be Richey,

who had found me by the simple expedient of tracing Alison, and he was jubilant.

"I don't sleep with one in my pocket," I retorted, "but if you'll hold the line I'll call out the window to

"Johnson!" I could hear the laugh with which McKnight comprehended the situation. He was still chuckling

"Four. Listen, Lollie. We've got him. Do you hear? Through the woman at Baltimore. Then the other woman,

the lady of the restaurant" he was obviously avoiding names "she is playing our cards for us. No I don't

know why, and I don't care. But you be at the Incubator tonight at eight o'clock. If you can't shake Johnson,

To this day I believe the Sam Forbeses have not recovered from the surprise of my unexpected arrival, my

one appearance at dinner in Granger's clothes, and the note on my dresser which informed them the next

morning that I had folded my tents like the Arabs and silently stole away. For at half after five Johnson and I,

the former as uninquisitive as ever, were on our way through the dust to the station, three miles away, and by

four that afternoon we were in Washington. The journey had been uneventful. Johnson relaxed under the

influence of my tobacco, and spoke at some length on the latest improvements in gallows, dilating on the

absurdity of cutting out the former free passes to see the affair in operation. I remember, too, that he

mentioned the curious anomaly that permits a man about to be hanged to eat a hearty meal. I did not enjoy

Before we got into Washington I had made an arrangement with Johnson to surrender myself at two the

following afternoon. Also, I had wired to Alison, asking her if she would carry out the contract she had made.

The detective saw me home, and left me there. Mrs. Klopton received me with dignified reserve. The very

"Now what is it, Mrs. Klopton?" I demanded finally, when she had informed me, in a patient and

"When I lived with Mr. Justice Springer," she began acidly, her mendingbasket in her hands, "it was an

orderly, wellconducted household. You can ask any of the neighbors. Meals were cooked and, what's more,

they were eaten; there was none of this 'here one day and gone the next' business."

"Nonsense," I observed. "You're tired, that's all, Mrs. Klopton. And I wish you would go out; I want to

"That's not all," she said with dignity, from the doorway. "Women coming and going here, women whose

shoes I am not fit I mean, women who are not fit to touch my shoes coming here as insolent as you

"Told her you were sick in a hospital and wouldn't be out for a year!" she said triumphantly. "And when she

"Late last night. And she had a lighthaired man across the street. If she thought I didn't see him, she don't

At five minutes before eight I was at the Incubator, where I found Hotchkiss and McKnight. They were

bending over a table, on which lay McKnight's total armament a pair of pistols, an elephant gun and an old

"Draw up a chair and help yourself to pie,' he said, pointing to the arsenal. "This is for the benefit of our

Hotchkiss, who had been trying to get the wrong end of a cartridge into the barrel of one of the revolvers,

"We have desperate people to handle," he said pompously, "and we may need desperate means."

"Hotchkiss is like the small boy whose one ambition was to have people grow ashen and tremble at the

mention of his name," McKnight jibed. But they were serious enough, both of them, under it all, and when

"You're compounding a felony," I remonstrated, when they had explained. "I'm not eager to be locked away,

"We haven't got either of them, you know," McKnight remonstrated, "and we won't have, if we don't start.

The plan was simplicity itself. According to Hotchkiss, Sullivan was to meet Bronson at Mrs. Conway's

apartment, at eightthirty that night, with the notes. He was to be paid there and the papers destroyed. "But

just before that interesting finale," McKnight ended, "we will walk in, take the notes, grab Sullivan, and give

I suppose not one of us, slewing around corners in the machine that night, had the faintest doubt that we were

on the right track, or that Fate, scurvy enough before, was playing into our hands at last. Little Hotchkiss was

in a state of fever; he alternately twitched and examined the revolver, and a fear that the two movements

might be synchronous kept me uneasy. He produced and dilated on the scrap of pillow slip from the wreck,

and showed me the stiletto, with its point in cotton batting for safekeeping. And in the intervals he implored

We were all grave enough and very quiet, however, when we reached the large building where Mrs. Conway

had her apartment. McKnight left the power on, in case we might want to make a quick getaway, and

Hotchkiss gave a final look at the revolver. I had no weapon. Somehow it all seemed melodramatic to the

verge of farce. In the doorway Hotchkiss was a half dozen feet ahead; Richey fell back beside me. He

dropped his affectation of gayety, and I thought he looked tired. "Same old Sam, I suppose?" he asked.

Hotchkiss was waiting near the elevator. McKnight put his hand on my arm. "Now, look here, old man," he

said, "I've got two arms and a revolver, and you've got one arm and a splint. If Hotchkiss is right, and there is

We crowded out of the elevator at the fourth floor, and found ourselves in a rather theatrical hallway of

draperies and armor. It was very quiet; we stood uncertainly after the car had gone, and looked at the two or

three doors in sight. They were heavy, covered with metal, and sound proof. From somewhere above came

the metallic accuracy of a playerpiano, and through the open window we could hear or feel the throb of

"Well, Sherlock," McKnight said, "what's the next move in the game? Is it our jump, or theirs? You brought

None of us knew just what to do next. No sound of conversation penetrated the heavy doors. We waited

uneasily for some minutes, and Hotchkiss looked at his watch. Then he put it to his ear.

"Good gracious!" he exclaimed, his head cocked on one side, "I believe it has stopped. I'm afraid we are late."

We were late. My watch and Hotchkiss' agreed at nine o clock, and, with the discovery that our man might

have come and gone, our zest in the adventure began to flag. McKnight motioned us away from the door and

rang the bell. There was no response, no sound within. He rang it twice, the last time long and vigorously,

"I don't half like this," he said. "That woman is in; you heard me ask the elevator boy. For two cents I'd "

I had seen it when he did. The door was ajar about an inch, and a narrow wedge of rosecolored light showed

beyond. I pushed the door a little and listened. Then, with both men at my heels, I stepped into the private

corridor of the apartment and looked around. It was a square reception hall, with rugs on the floor, a tall

mahogany rack for hats, and a couple of chairs. A lantern of rosecolored glass and a desk light over a

None of us was comfortable. The place was full of feminine trifles that made us feel the weakness of our

"We look like an invading army," he said. "If she's here alone, we will startle her into a spasm. One of us

The sound, whatever it had been, was not repeated. We went awkwardly out into the hall, very

uncomfortable, all of us, and flipped a coin. The choice fell to me, which was right enough, for the affair was

"Wait just inside the door," I directed, "and if Sullivan comes, or anybody that answers his description, grab

The apartment, save in the hallway, was unlighted. By one of those freaks of arrangement possible only in the

modern flat, I found the kitchen first, and was struck a smart and unexpected blow by a swinging door. I

carried a handful of matches, and by the time I had passed through a butler's pantry and a refrigerator room I

was completely lost in the darkness. Until then the situation had been merely uncomfortable; suddenly it

became grisly. From somewhere near came a longsustained groan, followed almost instantly by the crash of

I struck a fresh match, and found myself in a narrow rear hallway. Behind me was the door by which I must

have come; with a keen desire to get back to the place I had started from, I opened the door and attempted to

cross the room. I thought I had kept my sense of direction, but I crashed without warning into what, from the

resulting jangle, was the diningtable, probably laid for dinner. I cursed my stupidity in getting into such a

situation, and I cursed my nerves for making my hand shake when I tried to strike a match. The groan had not

I braced myself against the table and struck the match sharply against the sole of my shoe. It flickered faintly

and went out. And then, without the slightest warning, another dish went off the table. It fell with a thousand

splinterings; the very air seemed broken into crashing waves of sound. I stood still, braced against the table,

holding the red end of the dying match, and listened. I had not long to wait; the groan came again, and I

I could hear the thud of his tail on the floor, but he did not move. He only whimpered. There is something

companionable in the presence of a dog, and I fancied this dog in trouble. Slowly I began to work my way

"Good boy," I said, as he whimpered. "We'll find the light, which ought to be somewhere or other around

I stumbled over something, and I drew back my foot almost instantly. "Did I step on you, old man I

exclaimed, and bent to pat him. I remember straightening suddenly and hearing the dog pad softly toward me

around the table. I recall even that I had put the matches down and could not find them. Then, with a bursting

horror of the room and its contents, of the gibbering dark around me, I turned and made for the door by which

I could not find it. I felt along the endless wainscoting, past miles of wall. The dog was beside me, I think,

but he was part and parcel now, to my excited mind, with the Thing under the table. And when, after aeons of

search, I found a knob and stumbled into the reception hall, I was as nearly in a panic as any man could be.

I was myself again in a second, and by the light from the hall I led the way back to the tragedy I had stumbled

on. Bronson still sat at the table, his elbows propped on it, his cigarette still lighted, burning a hole in the

cloth. Partly under the table lay Mrs. Conway face down. The dog stood over her and wagged his tail.

McKnight pointed silently to a large copper ashtray, filled with ashes and charred bits of paper.

"The notes, probably," he said ruefully. "He got them after all, and burned them before her. It was more than

Hotchkiss got up and took off his hat. "They are dead," he announced solemnly, and took his notebook out

McKnight and I did the only thing we could think of drove Hotchkiss and the dog out of the room, and

closed and locked the door. "It's a matter for the police," McKnight asserted. "I suppose you've got an officer

We left Hotchkiss in charge and went downstairs. It was McKnight who first saw Johnson, leaning against a

park railing across the street, and called him over. We told him in a few words what we had found, and he

"After while, in a few weeks or months, Mr. Blakeley," he said, "when you get tired of monkeying around

with the bloodstain and fingerprint specialist upstairs, you come to me. I've had that fellow you want

At ten minutes before two the following day, Monday, I arrived at my office. I had spent the morning putting

my affairs in shape, and in a trip to the stable. The afternoon would see me either a free man or a prisoner for

an indefinite length of time, and, in spite of Johnson's promise to produce Sullivan, I was more prepared for

Blobs was watching for me outside the door, and it was clear that he was in a state of excitement bordering

on delirium. He did nothing, however, save to tip me a wink that meant "As man to man, I'm for you." I was

too much engrossed either to reprove him or return the courtesy, but I heard him follow me down the hall to

the small room where we keep outgrown lawbooks, typewriter supplies and, incidentally, our wraps. I was

wondering vaguely if I would ever hang my hat on its nail again, when the door closed behind me. It shut

firmly, without any particular amount of sound, and I was left in the dark. I groped my way to it, irritably, to

find it locked on the outside. I shook it frantically, and was rewarded by a sibilant whisper through the

"Keep quiet," Blobs was saying huskily. "You're in deadly peril. The police are waiting in your office, three

of 'em. I'm goin' to lock the whole bunch in and throw the key out of the window."

"Come back here, you imp of Satan!" I called furiously, but I could hear him speeding down the corridor, and

the slam of the outer office door by which he always announced his presence. And so I stood there in that

ridiculous cupboard, hot with the heat of a steaming September day, musty with the smell of old leather

bindings, littered with broken overshoes and handleless umbrellas. I was apoplectic with rage one minute,

He came without haste, strutting with new dignity, and paused outside my prison door.

"Well, I guess that will hold them for a while," he remarked comfortably, and proceeded to turn the key. "I've

got 'em fastened up like sardines in a can!" he explained, working with the lock. "Gee whiz! you'd ought to

hear 'em!" When he got his breath after the shaking I gave him, he began to splutter. "How'd I know?" he

demanded sulkily. "You nearly broke your neck gettin' away the other time. And I haven't got the old key. It's

"Down the elevator shaft." There was a gleam of indignant satisfaction through his tears of rage and

And so, while he hunted the key in the debris at the bottom of the shaft, I quieted his prisoners with the

assurance that the lock had slipped, and that they would be free as lords as soon as we could find the janitor

with a passkey. Stuart went down finally and discovered Blobs, with the key in his pocket, telling the

engineer how he had tried to save me from arrest and failed. When Stuart came up he was almost cheerful,

Simultaneous with the finding of the key came Hotchkiss, and we went in together. I shook hands with two

men who, with Hotchkiss, made a not very animated group. The taller one, an oldish man, lean and hard,

"Yes. Allegheny County has assumed jurisdiction, the exact locality where the crime was committed being in

doubt." He seemed to be the spokesman. The other, shorter and rotund, kept an amiable silence. "We hope

you will see the wisdom of waiving extradition," he went on. "It will save time."

"I'll come, of course," I agreed. "The sooner the better. But I want you to give me an hour here, gentlemen. I

The lean man took a cigar; the rotund man took three, putting two in his pocket.

"How about the catch of that door?" he inquired jovially. "Any danger of it going off again?" Really,

considering the circumstances, they were remarkably cheerful. Hotchkiss, however, was not. He paced the

floor uneasily, his hands under his coattails. The arrival of McKnight created a diversion; he carried a long

package and a corkscrew, and shook hands with the police and opened the bottle with a single gesture.

"I always want something to cheer on these occasions," he said. "Where's the water, Blakeley? Everybody

"To your eternal discomfiture," he said, bowing ceremoniously. "May you go home and never come back! If

The lean man nodded gravely. "Prosit," he said. But the fat one leaned back and laughed consumedly.

Hotchkiss finished a mental synopsis of his position, and put down his glass. "Gentlemen," he said

pompously, "within five minutes the man you want will be here, a murderer caught in a net of evidence so

The detectives glanced at each other solemnly. Had they not in their possession a sealskin bag containing a

wallet and a bit of gold chain, which, by putting the crime on me, would leave a gap big enough for Sullivan

"Why don't you say your little speech before Johnson brings the other man, Lawrence?" McKnight inquired.

"You understand, of course," the lean man put in gravely, "that what you say may be used against you."

It took some time to tell the story of my worse than useless trip to Pittsburg, and its sequel. They listened

"Mr. Hotchkiss here," I finished, "believes that the man Sullivan, whom we are momentarily expecting,

committed the crime. Mr. McKnight is inclined to implicate Mrs. Conway, who stabbed Bronson and then

"I hope not," said the stout detective quizzically. And then Alison was announced. My impulse to go out and

meet her was forestalled by the detectives, who rose when I did. McKnight, therefore, brought her in, and I

"I have put you to a great deal of trouble," I said contritely, when I saw her glance around the room. "I wish I

"It is only right that I should come," she replied, looking up at me. "I am the unconscious cause of most of it,

I presented Hotchkiss and the two detectives, who eyed her with interest. In her poise, her beauty, even in her

gown, I fancy she represented a new type to them. They remained standing until she sat down.

"I have brought the necklace," she began, holding out a whitewrapped box, "as you asked me to."

I passed it, unopened, to the detectives. "The necklace from which was broken the fragment you found in the

sealskin bag," I explained. "Miss West found it on the floor of the car, near lower ten."

"I am not certain," she replied. "I have seen one very much like it." Her tone was troubled. She glanced at me

"Where?" The detective was watching her closely. At that moment there came an interruption. The door

opened without ceremony, and Johnson ushered in a tall, blond man, a stranger to all of us: I glanced at

Alison; she was pale, but composed and scornful. She met the newcoiner's eyes full, and, caught unawares,

"Sit down, Mr. Sullivan," McKnight beamed cordially. "Have a cigar? I beg your pardon, Alison, do you

"Not at all," she said composedly. Sullivan had had a second to sound his bearings.

"But that's what you're to do," McKnight said cheerfully, pulling up a chair. "You've got the most attentive

audience you could ask. These two gentlemen are detectives from Pittsburg, and we are all curious to know

the finer details of what happened on the car Ontario two weeks ago, the night your fatherinlaw was

murdered." Sullivan gripped the arms of his chair. "We are not prejudiced, either. The gentlemen from

Pittsburg are betting on Mr. Blakeley, over there. Mr. Hotchkiss, the gentleman by the radiator, is ready to

"Gentlemen," Sullivan said slowly, "I give you my word of honor that I did not kill Simon Harrington, and

"Fiddlededee!" cried Hotchkiss, bustling forward. "Why, I can tell you " But McKnight pushed him firmly

"I am ready to plead guilty to the larceny," Sullivan went on. "I took Mr. Blakeley's clothes, I admit. If I can

The stout detective was listening with his mouth open. "Do you mean to say," he demanded, "that you got

into Mr. Blakeley's berth, as he contends, took his clothes and forged notes, and left the train before the

"I gave them to Bronson yesterday. Much good they did him!" bitterly. We were all silent for a moment. The

two detectives were adjusting themselves with difficulty to a new point of view; Sullivan was looking

dejectedly at the floor, his hands hanging loose between his knees. I was watching Alison; from where I

"I have no intention of pressing any charge against you," I said with forced civility, for my hands were

itching to get at him, "if you will give us a clear account of what happened on the Ontario that night."

Sullivan raised his handsome, haggard head and looked around at me. "I've seen you before, haven't I?" he

asked. "Weren't you an uninvited guest at the Laurels a few days or nights ago? The cat, you remember,

"The truth can't hurt me," he said, "but it's devilish unpleasant. Alison, you know all this. You would better

His use of her name crazed me. I stepped in front of her and stood over him. "You will not bring Miss West

"Oh, very well," he said with assumed indifference. Hotchkiss just then escaped from Richey's grasp and

"I'd better begin by going back a little," he went on sullenly. "I suppose you know I was married to Ida

Harrington about five years ago. She was a good girl, and I thought a lot of her. But her father opposed the

"I had thought, of course, that there would be money, and it was a bad day when I found out I'd made a

mistake. My sister was wild with disappointment. We were pretty hard up, my sister and I."

I was watching Alison. Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap, and she was staring out of the window at

"You understand, of course, that I'm not defending myself," went on the sullen voice. "The day came when

old Harrington put us both out of the house at the point of a revolver, and I threatened I suppose you know

"My sister and I had hard times after that. We lived on the continent for a while. I was at Monte Carlo and

she was in Italy. She met a young lady there, the granddaughter of a steel manufacturer and an heiress, and

she sent for me. When I got to Rome the girl was gone. Last winter I was all in social secretary to an

Englishman, a wholesale grocer with a new title, but we had a row, and I came home. I went out to the

Heaton boys' ranch in Wyoming, and met Bronson there. He lent me money, and I've been doing his dirty

Sullivan got up then and walked slowly forward and back as he talked, his eyes on the faded pattern of the

"If you want to live in hell," he said savagely, "put yourself in another man's power. Bronson got into trouble,

forging John Gilmore's name to those notes, and in some way he learned that a man was bringing the papers

back to Washington on the Flier. He even learned the number of his berth, and the night before the wreck,

Hotchkiss stepped forward once more importantly. "Which read, I think: 'Man with papers in lower ten, car

"It was something like that, anyhow. But it was a nasty business, and it made matters worse that he didn't care

that a telegram which must pass through a half dozen hands was more or less incriminating to me.

"Then, to add to the unpleasantness of my position, just after we boarded the train I was accompanying my

sister and this young lady, Miss West a woman touched me on the sleeve, and I turned to face my wife!

"That took away my last bit of nerve. I told my sister, and you can understand she was in a bad way, too. We

"Go on," she said coldly. "It is too late to shield me. The time to have done that was when I was your guest."

"Well," he went on, his eyes turned carefully away from my face, which must have presented certainly

anything but a pleasant sight. "Miss West was going to do me the honor to marry me, and "

"You scoundrel!" I burst forth, thrusting past Alison West's chair. "You you infernal cur!"

One of the detectives got up and stood between us. "You must remember, Mr. Blakeley, that you are forcing

this story from this man. These details are unpleasant, but important. You were going to marry this young

"It was my sister's plan, and I was in a bad way for money. If I could marry, secretly, a wealthy girl and go to

"So it was more than a shock to see my wife on the train, and to realize from her face that she knew what was

"It meant that the whole thing had gone up. Old Harrington had carried a gun for me for years, and the same

train wouldn't hold both of us. Of course, I thought that he was in the coach just behind ours."

Hotchkiss was leaning forward now, his eyes narrowed, his thin lips drawn to a line.

"No," he said gruffly. "Can't do anything with my left hand." Hotchkiss subsided, crestfallen but alert. "I tore

up that cursed telegram, but I was afraid to throw the scraps away. Then I looked around for lower ten. It was

almost exactly across my berth was lower seven, and it was, of course, a bit of exceptional luck for me that

"No. It would do no good, and she was in a bad way without that to make her worse."

"Your sister was killed, think." The shorter detective took a small package from his pocket and held it in his

"Yes, she was killed," Sullivan said soberly. "What I say now can do her no harm."

He stopped to push back the heavy hair which dropped over his forehead, and went on more connectedly.

"It was late, after midnight, and we went at once to our berths. I undressed, and then I lay there for an hour,

wondering how I was going to get the notes. Some one in lower nine was restless and wide awake, but finally

"The man in ten was sleeping heavily. I could hear his breathing, and it seemed to be only a question of

getting across and behind the curtains of his berth without being seen. After that, it was a mere matter of quiet

"The car became very still. I was about to try for the other berth, when some one brushed softly past, and I

"Finally, however, when things had been quiet for a time, I got up, and after looking along the aisle, I slipped

behind the curtains of lower ten. You understand, Mr. Blakeley, that I thought you were in lower ten, with the

"I'm not trying to defend myself," he went on. "I was ready to steal the notes I had to. But murder!"

"Well, I slipped across and behind the curtains. It was very still. The man in ten didn't move, although my

"I felt around cautiously. It was perfectly dark, and I came across a bit of chain, about as long as my finger. It

He shuddered, and I could see Alison's hands clenching and unclenching with the strain.

"All at once it struck me that the man was strangely silent, and I think I lost my nerve. Anyhow, I drew the

curtains open a little, and let the light fall on my hands. They were red, bloodred."

He leaned one hand on the back of the chair, and was silent for a moment, as though he lived over again the

The stout detective had let his cigar go out; he was still drawing at it nervously. Richey had picked up a

paperweight and was tossing it from hand to hand; when it slipped and fell to the floor, a startled shudder

"There was something glittering in there," Sullivan resumed, "and on impulse I picked it up. Then I dropped

"Where you wiped your hands on the bedclothing and stuck the dirk into the pillow." Hotchkiss was seeing

"I suppose I did I'm not very clear about what happened then. But when I rallied a little I saw a Russia

leather wallet lying in the aisle almost at my feet, and, like a fool, I stuck it, with the bit of chain, into my

"I sat there, shivering, for what seemed hours. It was still perfectly quiet, except for some one snoring. I

"The more I thought of it the worse things looked. The telegram was the first thing against me it would put

the police on my track at once, when it was discovered that the man in lower ten had been killed.

He stopped for a minute, as if the recalling of the next occurrence was almost beyond him.

"I took out the wallet," he said simply, "and opening it, held it to the light. In gilt letters was the name, Simon

"Things seemed to whirl around for a while. I sat there almost paralyzed, wondering what this new

"My wife, I knew, would swear I had killed her father; nobody would be likely to believe the truth.

"Do you believe me now?" He rooked around at us defiantly. "I am telling the absolute truth, and not one of

"After a bit the man in lower nine got up and walked along the aisle toward the smoking compartment. I

"It was then I got the idea of changing berths with him, getting into his clothes, and leaving the train. I give

Alison looked scornfully incredulous, but I felt that the man was telling the truth.

"I changed the numbers of the berths, and it worked well. I got into the other man's berth, and he came back

to mine. The rest was easy. I dressed in his clothes luckily, they fitted and jumped the train not far from

"There is something else you must clear up," I said. "Why did you try to telephone me from M, and why did

"Well, it was this way: of course, I did not know your name, Mr. Blakeley. The telegram said, 'Man with

papers in lower ten, car seven," and after I had made what I considered my escape, I began to think I had left

"He would probably be accused of the crime. So, although when the wreck occurred I supposed every one

connected with the affair had been killed, there was a chance that you had survived. I've not been of much

account, but I didn't want a man to swing because I'd left him in my place. Besides, I began to have a theory

"As we entered the car a tall, dark woman passed us, with a glass of water in her hand, and I vaguely

"If she, too, thought the man with the notes was in lower ten, it explained a lot, including that piece of a

"When I got to the Carter house, and got to bed I had sprained my ankle in the jump I went through the

alligator bag I had taken from lower nine. When I found your name, I sent the first message. Then, soon after,

I came across the notes. It seemed too good to be true, and I was crazy for fear the message had gone.

"At first I was going to send them to Bronson; then I began to see what the possession of the notes meant to

me. It meant power over Bronson, money, influence, everything. He was a devil, that man."

"Well, he's at home now," said McKnight, and we were glad to laugh and relieve the tension.

Alison put her hand over her eyes, as if to shut out the sight of the man she had so nearly married, and I

furtively touched one of the soft little curls that nestled at the back of her neck.

"When I was able to walk," went on the sullen voice, "I came at once to Washington. I tried to sell the notes

to Bronson, but he was almost at the end of his rope. Not even my threat to send them back to you, Mr.

"I think you gentlemen will see reason in my theory now," he said. "Mrs. Conway wanted the notes to force a

The detective with the small package carefully rolled off the rubber band, and unwrapped it. I held my breath

"These things, Mr. Blakeley, we found in the sealskin bag Mr. Sullivan says he left you. This wallet, Mr.

Sullivan opened it, and, glancing at the name inside, "Simon Harrington," nodded affirmatively.

"This, I believe, is the dagger." He held it up, and Alison gave a faint cry of astonishment and dismay.

"Oh, don't ask me!" she gasped breathlessly, her eyes turned on Sullivan. "It's it's too terrible!"

"Tell him," I advised, leaning over to her. "It will be found out later, anyhow."

"Ask him," she said, nodding toward Sullivan. The detective unwrapped the small box Alison had brought,

disclosing the trampled necklace and broken chain. With clumsy fingers he spread it on the table and fitted

"Where did you find that chain?" Sullivan asked hoarsely, looking for the first time at Alison.

"Now, Mr. Sullivan," said the detective civilly, "I believe you can tell us, in the light of these two exhibits,

Sullivan looked again at the dagger, a sharp little bit of steel with a Florentine handle. Then he picked up the

locket and pressed a hidden spring under one of the cameos. Inside, very neatly engraved, was the name and a

"Gentlemen," he said, his face ghastly, "it is of no use for me to attempt a denial. The dagger and necklace

Hotchkiss put away his notebook and looked around with an air of triumphant vindication. It gave us a

chance to smile and look relieved. After all, Mrs. Curtis was dead. It was the happiest solution of the unhappy

"I learned through the papers that my wife was in a Baltimore hospital, and yesterday I ventured there to see

her. I felt if she would help me to keep straight, that now, with her father and my sister both dead, we might

"I understand now what puzzled me then. It seemed that my sister went into the next car and tried to make my

wife promise not to interfere. But Ida Mrs. Sullivan was firm, of course. She said her father had papers,

"She said, also, that her father was in our car, and that there would be the mischief to pay in the morning. It

was probably when my sister tried to get the papers that he awakened, and she had to do what she did."

It was over. Save for a technicality or two, I was a free man. Alison rose quietly and prepared to go; the men

stood to let her pass, save Sullivan who sat crouched in his chair, his face buried in his hands. Hotchkiss, who

had been tapping the desk with his pencil, looked up abruptly and pointed the pencil at me.

"If all this is true, and I believe it is, then who was in the house next door, Blakeley, the night you and Mr.

Johnson searched? You remember, you said it was a woman's hand at the trap door."

I glanced hastily at Johnson, whose face was impassive. He had his hand on the knob of the door and he

"There were a number of scratches on Mrs. Conway's right hand," he observed to the room in general. "Her

He went out then, but he turned as he closed the door and threw at me a glance of halfamused,

McKnight saw Alison, with Mrs. Dallas, to their carriage, and came back again. The gathering in the office

was breaking up. Sullivan, looking worn and old, was standing by the window, staring at the broken necklace

in his hand. When he saw me watching him, he put it on the desk and picked up his hat.

I believe that Richey and Hotchkiss led me somewhere to dinner, and that, for fear I would be lonely without

him, they sent for Johnson. And I recall a spirited discussion in which Hotchkiss told the detective that he

could manage certain cases, but that he lacked induction. Richey and I were mainly silent. My thoughts

would slip ahead to that hour, later in the evening, when I should see Alison again.

I dressed in savage haste finally, and was so particular about my tie that Mrs. Klopton gave up in despair.

"I wish, until your arm is better, that you would buy the kind that hooks on," she protested, almost tearfully.

"That's a lover's knot you've tied this time," I snarled, and, jerking open the bow knot she had so painfully

executed, looked out the window for Johnson until I recalled that he no longer belonged in my perspective.

I was late, of course. The drawingroom and library at the Dallas home were empty. I could hear billiard

balls rolling somewhere, and I turned the other way. I found Alison at last on the balcony, sitting much as she

had that night on the beach, her chin in her hands, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the trees and lights of the

square across. She was even whistling a little, softly. But this time the plaintiveness was gone. It was a tender

little tune. She did not move, as I stood beside her, looking down. And now, when the moment had come, all

the thousand and one things I had been waiting to say forsook me, precipitately beat a retreat, and left me

unsupported. The arcmoon sent little fugitive lights over her hair, her eyes, her gown.

"Don't do that," I said unsteadily. "You you know what I want to do when you whistle!"

She glanced up at me, and she did not stop. She did not stop! She went on whistling softly, a bit tremulously.

And straightway I forgot the street, the chance of passersby, the voices in the house behind us. "The world

doesn't hold any one but you," I said reverently. "It is our world, sweetheart. I love you."

A boy was whistling on the pavement below. I let her go reluctantly and sat back where I could see her.

"I haven't done this the way I intended to at all," I confessed. "In books they get things all settled, and then

"Oh, about getting married and that sort of thing," I explained with elaborate carelessness. "We we could

"I believe you are afraid!" she declared. "I refuse to marry you unless you propose properly. Everybody does

"Very well," I consented with an exaggerated sigh. "If you will promise not to think I look like an idiot, I

I had to pass her to close the door behind us, but when I kissed her again she protested that we were not really

I turned to look down at her. "It is a terrible thing," I said exultantly, "to love a girl the way I love you, and to

>From across the street there came a sharp crescendo whistle, and a vaguely familiar figure separated itself

"Say," he called, in a hoarse whisper, "shall I throw the key down the elevator shaft?"