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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56838 ***
+
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+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+     1. Page scan source:
+        https://books.google.com/books?id=ZK0RAAAAYAAJ&pg
+        (Harvard College Library)
+
+
+
+
+The Saintsbury Affair
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: _As I came up, emptied a chatelaine purse upon
+Barney's tray_. FRONTISPIECE. _See page 23_.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SAINTSBURY AFFAIR
+
+By
+ROMAN DOUBLEDAY
+Author of "The Hemlock Avenue Mystery,"
+"The Red House on Rowan Street," etc.
+
+
+With Illustrations by
+J. V. McFall
+
+
+
+BOSTON
+LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
+1912
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1911, 1912_,
+By Little, Brown, and Company.
+------
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+Published, February, 1912
+
+
+
+
+_Electrotyped and Printed by
+THE COLONIAL PRESS
+C. B. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A._
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+CHAPTER
+       I. The Beginning of the Tangle.
+      II. Two Lovely Ladies.
+     III. The Unexpected Happens.
+      IV. Crossed Wires.
+       V. Bertillon Methods and Some Others.
+      VI. The Frat Supper.
+     VII. Chiefly Gossip.
+    VIII. Some of Jean's Ways.
+      IX. A Gleam of Light.
+       X. Ways That Are Dark.
+      XI. The Simmering Samovar.
+     XII. On the Trail of Diavolo.
+    XIII. The Samovar Explodes.
+     XIV. Tangled Heart-Strings.
+      XV. The Outlaw.
+     XVI. The Gift-Bond.
+    XVII. A Voice from the Past.
+   XVIII. A Rescue.
+     XIX. Cards on the Table.
+      XX. The Ultimate Discovery.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations
+AS I CAME UP, HIS LISTENER EMPTIED A
+   CHATELAINE PURSE UPON BARNEY'S TRAY         _Frontispiece_
+
+"HE WAS DIAVOLO'S PARTNER," HE SAID VEHEMENTLY     _Page_ 137
+
+"I BELIEVE IT," SAID A VOICE THAT STARTLED US ALL  _Page_ 186
+
+THERE LAY A PATHETIC LITTLE HEAP ON THE DAGHESTAN
+   RUG ON MY FLOOR                                 _Page_ 290
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The
+Saintsbury Affair
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE BEGINNING OF THE TANGLE
+
+
+Let me see where the story begins. Perhaps I can date it from the
+telephone invitation to dinner which I received one Monday from my
+dear and kind friend Mrs. Whyte.
+
+"And see that you are just as clever and agreeable as your naturally
+morose nature will permit," she said saucily. "I have a charming young
+lady here as my guest, and I want you to make a good impression."
+
+"Another?" I gasped. "So soon?"
+
+"I don't wonder that your voice is choked with surprise and
+gratitude," she retorted, and I could see with my mind's eye how her
+eyebrows went up. "You _don't_ deserve it,--I'll admit that freely.
+But I am of a forgiving nature."
+
+"You are so near to being an angel," I interrupted, "that it gives me
+genuine pleasure to suffer martyrdom at your behest. I welcome the
+opportunity to show you how devotedly I am your slave. Who is the
+young lady this time?"
+
+"Miss Katherine Thurston. Now if you would only talk in that way to
+_her_,--"
+
+"I won't," I said hastily. "At least, not until her hair is as white
+as yours is,--it can never be as lovely. But for your sake I will
+undertake to be as witty and amiable and generally delightful as I
+think it safe to be, having due regard for the young lady's peace of
+mind,--." I rang off just in time to escape the "You conceited puppy!"
+which I knew was panting to get on the wire. Mrs. Whyte's speech was
+at times that of an older generation.
+
+So that was how I came to go to Mrs. Whyte's dinner that memorable
+Monday evening, and to meet Katherine Thurston.
+
+But now that I come to look at it in this historical way, I see that I
+shall have to begin a little farther back, or you won't understand the
+significance of what took place that night.
+
+I already had another engagement for that evening, but I thought I
+could fit the two appointments in, by getting away from Mrs. Whyte's
+by ten o'clock. Under the circumstances she would forgive an early
+departure. My other engagement was of a peculiar and unescapable
+nature. It had come about in this way.
+
+There was a man in our town who had always interested me to an unusual
+degree, though my personal acquaintance with him was of the slightest.
+He was an architect, Kenneth Clyde by name, and he had done some of
+the best public buildings in the State. He had a wide circle of
+friends and acquaintances, and was related to half a dozen of the "Old
+families" of the town. (I am comparatively new myself. But I soon saw
+that Clyde belonged to the inner circle Of Saintsbury.) And yet, with
+all his professional success and his social privileges, there was
+something about the man that expressed an excessive humility. It was
+not diffidence or shyness,--he had all the self-possession that goes
+with good breeding. But he held himself back from claiming public
+credit or accepting any public place, though I knew that more than
+once it had been pressed upon him in a way that made it difficult for
+him to evade it. He persistently kept himself in the background, until
+his desire to remain inconspicuous almost became conspicuous in turn.
+He was the man, for instance, who did all the work connected with the
+organization of our Boat Club, but he refused to accept any Office. He
+was always ready to lend a hand with any public enterprise that needed
+pushing, but his name never figured on the committees that appeared in
+the newspapers. And yet, if physiognomy counts for anything, he was
+not born to take a back seat. He was approaching forty at this time,
+and in spite of his consistent modesty, he was one of the best known
+men in Saintsbury.
+
+As I say, he had always interested me as a man out of the ordinary,
+and when he walked into my law office a few days before that telephone
+call from Mrs. Whyte, I was uncommonly pleased at the idea that he
+should have come to me for legal advice when he might have had
+anything he wanted from the older lawyers in town whom he had known
+all his life. I guessed at a glance that it was professional advice he
+wanted, from the curiously tense look that underlay his surface
+coolness.
+
+"I have come to you, Mr. Hilton," he said directly, "partly because
+you are enough of a stranger here to regard me and my perplexities in
+an impersonal manner, and so make it easier for me to discuss them."
+
+"Yes," I said encouragingly. He had hesitated after his last words as
+though he found it hard to really open up the subject matter.
+
+"But that is only a part of my reason for asking you to consider my
+case," he went on with a certain repressed intensity. "I believe, from
+what I have seen of you, that you have both physical and moral
+courage, and that you will look at the matter as a man, as well as a
+lawyer."
+
+I nodded, not caring to commit myself until I understood better what
+he meant.
+
+"First, read this letter," he said, and laid before me a crumpled
+sheet which he had evidently been clutching in his hand inside of his
+coat pocket.
+
+It was a half sheet of ruled legal cap, and in the center was written,
+in a bold, well-formed hand,----
+
+
+"I need $500. You may bring it to my office Monday night at ten. No
+fooling on either side, you understand."
+
+
+"Blackmail!" I said.
+
+Clyde nodded. "What is the best way of dealing with a blackmailer?" he
+asked, looking at me steadily.
+
+"That may depend on circumstances," I said evasively. I felt that, as
+he had suggested, he was trying to appeal to my sympathies as a man
+rather than to my judgment as a lawyer.
+
+"I heard of one case," he said casually, "where a prominent man was
+approached by a blackmailer who had discovered some compromising
+secret, and he simply told the fellow that if he gave the story to the
+papers, as he threatened to do, he would shoot him and take the
+consequences, since life wouldn't be worth living in any event, if
+that story came out. I confess that course appeals to my common-sense.
+It is so conclusive."
+
+"I infer, however, that you didn't take that tone with this fellow
+when he first approached you," I said, touching the paper on my desk.
+"This is not his first demand."
+
+"No. The first time that it came, I was paralyzed, in a manner. I had
+been dreading something of that sort,--discovery, I mean,--for years.
+I had gone softly, to avoid notice, I had only half lived my life, I
+had felt each day to be a reprieve. Then _he_ came,--and asked money
+for keeping my secret. It seemed a very easy way of escape. In a way,
+it made me feel safer than before. I knew now where the danger was,
+and how to keep it down. It was only a matter of money. I paid, and
+felt almost cheerful. But he came again, and again. He has grown
+insolent." He drew his brows together sternly as he looked at the
+written threat which lay before us. He did not look like a man afraid.
+
+"Can you tell me the whole situation?" I asked. "If I know all the
+facts, I can judge better,--and you know that you speak in
+professional confidence."
+
+"I want to tell you," he said. "I--he knew--the fact is, I was
+sentenced to be hanged for a murder some fifteen years ago in Texas.
+The sentence is still suspended over me. I escaped before it was
+executed."
+
+A lawyer learns not to be surprised at any confession, for the depths
+of human nature which are opened to his professional eye are so
+amazing that he becomes accustomed to strange things, but I admit that
+I was staggered at my client's confidence. I picked up and folded and
+refolded the paper before I could speak quite casually.
+
+"And no one knows that fact? Your name--?"
+
+"I was known by another name at the time,--an assumed name. I'll tell
+you the whole story. But one word first,--I was and am innocent."
+
+He looked at me squarely but appealingly as he spoke, and suddenly
+I saw what the burden was which he had been carrying for fifteen
+years,--nearly half his life.
+
+"I believe you," I said, and unconsciously I held out my hand. He
+gripped it as a drowning man clutches a spar, and a dull flush swept
+over his face. His hand was trembling visibly as he finally drew it
+away, but he tried to speak lightly.
+
+"That's what I couldn't induce the judge or jury to do," he said. "Let
+me tell you how it all came about. It was in August of 1895. I had
+graduated in June,--I was twenty-three,--and before settling down to
+my new profession I went off on a vacation trip with a fellow I had
+come to know pretty well at the University during my last year there.
+He was not the sort of a friend I cared to introduce to my family, but
+there are worse fellows than poor Henley was. He was merely rather
+wild and lawless, with an instinct for gambling which grew upon him.
+We went off avowedly for a lark,--to see life, Henley put it. I knew
+his tastes well enough to guess beforehand that the society to which
+he would introduce me would not be creditable. The Clydes are as well
+known in this State as Bunker Hill is in Boston, and I felt a
+responsibility toward the name. So I insisted that on our travels I
+should be Tom Johnson."
+
+"I see. Then when the trouble came you were known by that name instead
+of your own?"
+
+"Yes. That's how I was able to come back here and to go on living my
+natural life."
+
+"That was fortunate. That situation was much easier to manage than if
+it had been the other way around."
+
+Clyde had picked up a paper knife and was examining it with absent
+attention, and instead of answering my remark directly he looked up
+with a frank smile.
+
+"You can't imagine what it means to me to be able to talk this over
+with you," he said. "All these years I have carried it--here. Why, it
+is like breathing after being half suffocated."
+
+"I understand."
+
+"You want to know the details, though," he went on more gravely. "We
+were together for several weeks, going from one city to another.
+Henley had a special faculty for striking up acquaintance with
+picturesque rascals, and for a time I found it very interesting as
+well as novel. It was a side of life I had never before come close to.
+But gradually I couldn't help seeing that Henley was helping out an
+uncommon knack with the cards by the tricks of a sharper. We
+quarrelled over it more than once, and things began to grow
+uncomfortable. The old irresponsible comradeship was chilled, though I
+didn't yet feel like cutting loose from him. One night we had been
+playing cards in a saloon in Houston, Texas,--Henley and I and two men
+we had picked up. They were rough and ready Westerners, and a sort to
+stand no fooling. We had all been drinking a little, but not enough to
+lose our heads. I saw Henley make a misdeal and I told him so. He was
+furious, and we all but came to blows in the quarrel that followed. I
+left him with the others and went off by myself. That evening had
+finally sickened me with the swine's husks I had been eating, and I
+suddenly determined to quit it then and there and get back to my own
+life, my own name, and my own people. I walked down to the station,
+found that a train for the north was just about to pull out, and
+jumped aboard. I was an hour away from Houston before I remembered
+something that made me change my hasty plan. I had left my bag in the
+room at the hotel, and though I didn't care about the clothes or the
+other things, there was-- Well, there is no reason why I should not
+tell you. There was a girl's picture in an inside compartment, and
+some letters, and I couldn't leave them to chance. I had simply
+forgotten all about that matter in my angry passion, but the thought
+now was like a dash of cold water, bringing me to my senses. I got out
+of the train at the next stop,--a place called Lester. It was just
+midnight. I found that the first train I could catch to take me back
+to Houston would go through at five in the morning, and I walked up
+and down that deserted platform,--for even the station agent went off
+to sleep after the midnight train went through,--for five mortal
+hours. I had time to think things over, and to realize that I had been
+playing with pitch as no Clyde had a right to."
+
+He paused for an instant, as though he were living the moment over,
+but I did not speak. I wanted him to tell the story in his own way.
+
+"I caught the five o'clock train back and was in Houston soon after
+six. I went at once to the hotel and to my room. Henley's room
+communicated with mine. The door between them was ajar, and I pushed
+it open to speak to him. He was leaning over the table, on which cards
+were scattered about, and he was quite dead, from a knife thrust
+between the shoulders."
+
+Clyde had been speaking in a composed manner, like one telling an
+entirely impersonal tale, but at this point he paused and a look of
+embarrassment clouded his face.
+
+"I find it hard to explain to you or to myself why I did so foolish a
+thing as I did next, but I was rather shaken up by weeks of
+dissipation, and the racketing of the night before and my excited,
+sleepless night had thrown me off my balance. When I saw Henley dead
+over the cards, I realized in a flash how bad it would look for me
+after my row with him in the saloon the night before. I jumped back
+into my own room and began stuffing my things into my bag pell-mell to
+make my escape."
+
+"The worst thing you could have done."
+
+"Of course. And it proved so. I had left my room-door ajar, a sweeper
+in the halls saw my mad haste, and it made him suspicious. When I
+stepped out of my room, the proprietor stopped me. Of course the whole
+thing was uncovered. I was arrested, tried for murder, and, as I told
+you, sentenced to be hanged." He finished grimly. His manner was
+studiedly unemotional.
+
+"And yet you had a perfect alibi, if you could prove it."
+
+"But I couldn't. No one knew I took that train. The train conductors
+were called, but neither of them remembered me. The station agent at
+Lester, with whom I had had some conversation about the first train
+back, was killed by an accident the next day. The fact that I was out
+of Houston from eleven until six was something I could not prove. And
+it was the one thing that would have saved me."
+
+"But neither could they prove, I take it, that you were in the hotel
+that night."
+
+"They tried to. The clerk testified that four men came in shortly
+after eleven and went up to Henley's room. One of them was Henley, two
+were strangers, and the fourth he had taken for granted to be me. My
+lawyer pressed him on that point, of course, and forced him to admit
+that he had not noticed particularly, but had assumed that it was I
+from the fact that he was with Henley, and because he was about my
+size and figure. Drinks had been sent up, and an hour later two of the
+men had quietly come down and gone out. Nothing further had been heard
+from our room until the sweeper reported in the morning that he had
+seen me acting like a man distracted, through the partly open door.
+Everything seemed to turn against me. I was bent on saving my name at
+any rate, so I could not be entirely open about my past history, and
+that prejudiced my case."
+
+"What is your own theory of the affair and of the missing third man?"
+I asked.
+
+"I suppose the men whom I had left with Henley in the saloon had
+picked up a fourth man for the game and gone to Henley's room. He
+probably tried to cheat again, and they were ready for him. One of
+them stabbed him. Then the other two waited quietly in the room while
+the actual slayer walked out, to make sure that he had a clear
+passage, and then they followed after he had had time to disappear.
+They were hard-bitted men, but not thugs."
+
+"You were tried and sentenced. How did you get away?"
+
+"After the sentence, and while I was on the way back to jail, I made
+my escape. I have always believed that the deputy sheriff who had me
+in charge gave me the opportunity intentionally. Certainly he fired
+over my head, and made a poor show at guessing my direction. I think
+he had doubts of the justice of the verdict and took that way of
+reversing the decision of the court, but of course I can never know."
+
+"Then you came back here? This had been your home before?"
+
+"Yes. It was the way to avoid comment. Kenneth Clyde was well known
+here, and nobody in Saintsbury even heard of the trial of one Tom
+Johnson in Houston. I have thought it best to go on living my life
+just as I should have done in any event. And I have done so, except
+that I have never-- But that doesn't matter." From the expression that
+swept over his face I guessed what the exception was. He had never
+dared to marry.
+
+"Then this man--?" I prompted.
+
+A fleeting smile passed over Clyde's face. He spoke with light
+cynicism.
+
+"As you say, then this man. I had almost come to believe that the past
+was dead and buried and that I would be justified in forgetting it
+myself. Then this man came into my office one day, affected surprise
+at seeing me, called me Tom Johnson, and laughed in my face when I
+denied the name. I was panic-stricken. I bought his silence. Of course
+he came again. As I said at the beginning, I am tired of the
+situation." There was a tone in his voice that would have held a
+warning for the blackmailer if he had heard it.
+
+"How much does the man know? Do you know whether he has anything to
+prove his charges?"
+
+"It seems that he was in the court-house as a spectator during the
+trial. He didn't know me at the time, though he might, for he seems to
+have been in this neighborhood time and again,--at least in the State.
+He is a trouble man himself,--some ten years ago he shot and killed a
+State senator here in Saintsbury. He was acquitted, because he got
+some friends to swear that Senator Benbow had made a motion as though
+to draw a gun, though he was found afterwards to be unarmed. But
+popular anger was so aroused against him, he had to leave the State,
+and he has drifted down stream ever since,--pretty far down, I
+imagine; fairly subterranean at times. All this I have found out since
+he forced his acquaintance upon me. I knew nothing of him before."
+
+"What is his name? Where is he to be found?"
+
+"Alfred Barker. He has an office in the Ph[oe]nix  Building at
+present. Whether he has any legitimate business I do not know. He
+hangs out under the shingle of the Western Land and Improvement Co.,
+but I have a feeling that that is only a cover."
+
+"A man who has lived that sort of a life is probably vulnerable," I
+said cheerfully. "I'll see what I can find out about him. In the
+meantime, I, as your attorney, will keep this appointment for you next
+Monday evening."
+
+"I thought that would probably be your plan. But now that I have put
+it into your hands, I am more than half sorry I did not keep it to
+myself and meet him with a revolver."
+
+I shook my head. "For a burnt child, you have curiously little respect
+for the fire of the law."
+
+Clyde had risen, and he stood looking at me with an impersonal
+sternness that made his eyes hard.
+
+"My life, and, what I value far more, my reputation, my name, are in
+that fellow's hands. And he is an unhung murderer,--his life is
+already forfeit."
+
+"His time will come," I said hastily. My new client looked altogether
+too much as though he were disposed to hurry on the slow-paced law! I
+could not encourage such reflections.
+
+Clyde nodded, but with an absent air, as though he were following his
+own thoughts rather than my words, and soon took his leave.
+
+When I decided to take up the practice of the law, I had fancied, in
+my youthful ignorance, that it was a sort of glorified compound of a
+detective story and Gems of Oratory. I had now been at it for some
+years, and so far my detective instincts had been chiefly required in
+the search for missing authorities in the law books, and my oratorical
+gifts had been exercised almost exclusively on delinquent debtors who
+didn't want to pay their debts. You can therefore imagine that Clyde's
+interview left me pleasantly excited. This was the real thing! This
+was the case I long had sought and mourned because I found it not! Not
+for worlds would I have missed the opportunity of meeting his
+blackmailing correspondent. To face a rascal was no uncommon
+experience, unfortunately; but to face so complete and melodramatic a
+rascal, and to try to wrest from him some incriminating admission that
+would give me a controlling hold on him in my turn,--that was
+something that did not come often into the day's work.
+
+Very much to my surprise, I found unexpected light upon the career of
+Alfred Barker not farther away than my own office. My first step was
+to set my clerk, Adam Fellows, to looking up the court and newspaper
+records of Barker's connection with the killing of Senator Benbow.
+When I mentioned his name to Fellows I saw by his sudden change of
+expression that I had touched some sore chord,--and if Fellows had an
+ambition it was to conceal his feelings, moreover.
+
+"You know Barker, then?" I said abruptly.
+
+"Yes," he said, in a very low voice,--and I guessed in what
+connection.
+
+I may say here that Fellows was a souvenir of my first trial case and
+of an early enthusiasm for humanity. One day, not long after my
+admission to the bar, (this was before I came to Saintsbury,) the
+court assigned to me the defense of a young fellow who had no lawyer.
+He was a clerk in a city office, and was charged with embezzlement by
+his employers. The money had gone for race-track gambling, and he
+could not deny his guilt; but by bringing out the facts of his youth
+and his unfortunate associations, I was able to get a minimum sentence
+for him,--the best that could be expected under the circumstances.
+When his sentence expired, I was on the lookout for him, and took him
+into my own office as a clerk. I had nothing he could embezzle, for
+one thing, and the dogged stoicism with which he had met his fate
+interested me. Besides, I knew it would be difficult for him to get
+work, particularly as he did not have an engaging personality. I think
+that in a manner he was grateful, but he never could forget that he
+carried the stigma of a convict, and he imagined that everyone else
+was remembering it also. This moodiness had grown upon him instead of
+wearing off. It used to make me impatient,--but it is easy enough for
+one whose withers are unwrung to be impatient with the galled jade's
+tendency to wince.
+
+"What do you know of him?" I asked.
+
+"I know that where he is, there is deviltry, but no one ever catches
+him," he said bitterly. "Someone else will pay all right, but the law
+doesn't touch him."
+
+"Did he get you into trouble?" I asked bluntly.
+
+"He made me believe he could make a fortune for me. He kept me going
+with hopes that the next time, the next time, I would win enough to
+square things up. It was his doing, not mine, really. But he did
+nothing that the law takes note of." He spoke with unusual excitement
+and feeling, and I didn't think any good would come of a discussion of
+moral responsibility at that time.
+
+"Well, look up everything possible about that affair when Benbow was
+killed," I said. "I want to see if there is anything in that which
+would give a hold on him."
+
+"Oh, there won't be," he said, scornfully. "He plays safe. But if
+there is any justice in heaven, he will come a cropper some day. Only
+it won't be by process of law. No convict stripes for _him_."
+
+"Let me know as soon as you find the record," I said, turning away.
+His bitterness only grew if you gave it opportunity.
+
+I then took occasion to visit the Ph[oe]nix Building, in order to
+locate the office which I expected to visit the Monday evening
+following. I wanted to know my way without wasting time.
+
+As I entered, I noticed a man standing before the building directory
+which hung opposite the elevators. He was a tall, athletic fellow, in
+clothes that suggested an engineer or fireman. His hat was pulled down
+over the upper part of his face, but his powerful, smooth-shaven jaw
+showed the peculiar blue tint of very dark men. All this I saw without
+consciously looking, but in a moment I had reason to notice him more
+closely. The elevator gate opened, and a man stepped out,--a rather
+shabby, untidy man, with a keen eye. He glanced at me carelessly, then
+his eye fell upon the tall young fellow before the bulletin board, and
+he smiled. He stepped up near him.
+
+"Hello! You here?" he said, softly. Then, deliberately, "Are you
+married yet?"
+
+The tall fellow turned and lunged toward him, but the other ducked and
+slipped adroitly out of his way and ran down to the open doorway and
+so into the street. The tall fellow made no attempt to follow. I think
+that lurch toward the other had been partly the result of surprise.
+But not wholly. He stood now, leaning against the wall, apparently
+waiting for the elevator, but I saw that his two fists had not yet
+unclenched themselves, and his blue-black jaw was squared in a way
+that told of locked teeth. He jerked his hat down farther over his
+face as he saw me looking at him, and turned away. He was breathing
+hard.
+
+"Can you direct me to Mr. Barker's office?" I asked the elevator man.
+
+"His office is in No. 23, second floor, but he ain't in. That was he
+that came down with me and went out."
+
+"Oh, all right. I'll come again," I said, and turned away.
+
+The tall young fellow had gone. Had he, too, come to look up Mr.
+Barker? At any rate, I should know Barker when we met again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+TWO LOVELY LADIES
+
+
+I am trying to give you this story as it opened up step by step before
+me and around me, not merely as I came to see it afterwards, looking
+backward. But of course I shall have to select my scenes. The story
+ran sometimes, like a cryptogram, through other events that seemed at
+the time to mean something entirely different, and I also did some
+living and working and thinking along other lines through those days.
+But these matters I eliminate in telling the tale. They were equally
+important to me at the time but now they are forgotten, and the links
+of the story are the only things that stand out in my memory.
+
+Mrs. Whyte's dinner was an important link, but before that there came
+another incident most significant, as I saw afterwards,--or, rather,
+two related incidents.
+
+There was an old beggar on the street-corner right across from my
+office for whom I had an especial affection. Of course he made a show
+of being a merchant rather than a beggar, by having a tray of cut
+flowers in summer and hot peanuts in winter and newspapers at all
+seasons, on a tripod arrangement beside him; and the police knew
+better than to see if he sometimes held up a wayfarer for more than
+the price of his wares. I was fond of him because he was so
+imperturbably cheerful, rain or shine, and so picturesque and
+resourceful in flattery. He was an old soldier; and one leg that had
+danced in days agone, and that had most heedlessly carried him to the
+firing line in half a dozen battles of our own Civil War was buried at
+Gettysburg. Barney seemed to regard this as a peculiarly fortunate
+circumstance, since it had made it possible for him to use a crutch.
+That crutch was a rare and wonderful possession, according to Barney.
+Hearing him dilate on its convenience and comfortableness, you might
+almost come to believe that he meant it all.
+
+Well, you'll understand from this that I not only liked but
+respected Barney, and I usually stopped to get a flower when I passed
+his stand on leaving my office. On that Monday,--that eventful and
+ever-to-be-remembered Monday,--I saw as I approached that Barney was
+holding forth in the spell-binding manner I knew, to another
+listener,--a young fellow, I thought at first. But as I came up, his
+listener emptied a chatelaine purse upon Barney's tray, and my
+surprised glance from the jingling shower of silver to the face of the
+impetuous donor showed me that it was a young girl,--a gallant,
+boyish-faced girl, whose eyes were shining into Barney's with the
+enthusiasm of a hero-worshipper.
+
+"I'll never forget that,--never!" she cried, in a voice thrilled with
+emotion. "It was great." And on the instant she turned on her heel
+like a boy and marched off down the street.
+
+I looked at Barney with suspended disapproval, and for once, to do him
+credit, he looked abashed.
+
+"Faith, and who'd think the chit would have all that money about her
+and her that reckless in shcattering it about!" he exclaimed. Then,
+recovering himself, he thrust the coins carelessly in his pocket
+(perhaps to get them out of my accusing sight) and ran on,
+confidentially,--
+
+"It's the Lord's own providince that she turned it over to me, instead
+of carrying it about to the shops where temptation besets a young girl
+on all sides. It's too full their pretty heads are of follolls and
+such, for it's light-headed they are at that age, and that's the
+Lord's truth."
+
+"You worked on her sympathies," I said sternly. "You saw she was a
+warm-hearted young girl, and you played up to her. You made yourself
+out a hero, you rascal."
+
+"You're the keen gentleman," said Barney admiringly. "Sure and you'd
+make a good priest, saving your good looks, for you'd see the
+confession in the heart before a poor lying penitent had time to think
+of a saving twist to give it that might look like the truth and save
+him a penance."
+
+"Never mind me and my remarkable qualities," I said severely. "What
+were you telling that girl?"
+
+Barney bent over his flowers to shift the shades which protected them
+from the sun, but after a moment's hesitation he answered, without
+looking up.
+
+"She has the way with her, that bit! When she looked me in the eye and
+says 'Tell me what I ask,' I knew my commanding officer, and it's not
+Barney that risks a court-martial for disobedience! No, sir! If she
+didn't keep at me to tell her how I lost my leg, now! Your honor
+couldn't have held out agin her, not to be the man you are."
+
+I knew the story of that lost leg, and how shy Barney was of retailing
+that heroic bit of his history, and I wondered less at the girl's
+emotion than at her success in drawing the hidden tale from him. He
+didn't tell it to many. While I marvelled he looked up with the
+twinkle I couldn't help liking.
+
+"She didn't give me time to tell her that that bit story wasn't the
+kind you pay to hear, but it would maybe have chilled the warm heart
+of her to have me push her silver back, and I wouldn't do that even if
+I had to keep the money to save her feelin's, the darlin'."
+
+"Awfully hard on you, I know," I said, letting us both down with the
+help of a little irony. "Where's my rosebud, you rascal?"
+
+He lifted a slender vase from the covered box beneath his table and
+brought out the flower he had reserved for me. It was a creamy white
+bud, deepening into a richer shade that hinted at stores of gold at
+the sealed-up heart. As he held it out silently, something in his
+whimsical face told me his thought.
+
+"Yes, you are right," I said casually, as I took the flower. "It
+_does_ look like her."
+
+Barney's eyes wrinkled appreciatively. "There was a mistake somewhere,
+sir, when you were born outside of Eire. But you got it straight this
+time."
+
+I went home to dress for Mrs. Whyte's dinner, and when I was ready I
+slipped into my pocket, to show my hostess, a little locket which held
+a miniature of my mother. Mrs. Whyte and my mother had been
+schoolmates,--that was why she was so much kinder to me than I could
+ever have deserved on my own account,--and I knew she would like to
+see the picture. I opened the case to look at it myself (my mother is
+still living, thank Heaven, and unchangeably young) and I was struck
+with the youthful modernity of it. Perhaps it was because the old
+style of dressing the hair had come back that it looked so of the
+present generation rather than of the past. It had been painted for my
+father in the days of their courtship, and on his death I had begged
+for the portrait, though my mother had refused to let me have the old
+case he carried. I had therefore spent some time and care in selecting
+a new case and had decided finally on one embellished with emeralds
+set in the form of a heart. I thought it symbolical of my dear
+mother's young-heartedness, but I found out afterwards that she
+especially objected to emeralds! Such are the hazards run by a mere
+man when he tries to deal with the Greater Mysteries. I have dwelt on
+this locket because it played an important part in after affairs,--and
+a very different part from what I designed for it when I slipped it
+into my pocket to show it to Mrs. Whyte.
+
+It is a good two miles from my lodgings to Mrs. Whyte's, but I was
+early and I wanted exercise, so I walked. It was within a few minutes
+of seven when I came to her highly respectable street. As I turned the
+corner of her block my attention was caught by the sight of a young
+girl in excited colloquy with the driver of a cab, which stood before
+the house adjoining Mrs. Whyte's. I think I should have looked for a
+chance to be of service in any case, but when I saw, as I did at once,
+that the girl with so gallant a bearing was the same girl who had
+impulsively emptied her purse among Barney's flowers, and that the
+driver seemed to be bullying her, I felt that it was very distinctly
+my affair.
+
+"But I tell you that I _have_ no money," she was saying with dramatic
+emphasis, "and there is nobody at home, and I can't get in, and if you
+will come to-morrow--"
+
+"Gammon," the man interrupted roughly. (She had not chosen her jehu
+with discrimination.) "You can't work that game on me--"
+
+"I can give you my watch as a pledge," she said eagerly.
+
+By that time I was near enough to interfere. (I always was lucky. Here
+I was ready if necessary to go through fire and water--a certain
+amount of each, at any rate--to get a better knowledge of the
+frank-hearted girl whose enthusiasm had so touched me in the
+afternoon, and all that Fate asked was a cabman's fare and a few stern
+words delivered with an air! Fate is no bargainer worthy the name.)
+
+"It was most awfully good of you to come to the rescue," said the
+girl, in the direct and gallant manner that I felt was a part of
+herself. "I was just beginning to wonder what under the sun I _should_
+do. You see, I--I spent all my money down town, and I took a cab up,
+thinking I'd get the money here to pay the man, and now I find the
+house locked up and not a soul at home,--and me on the doorstep like a
+charity child without a penny!"
+
+"That, was unlucky, certainly," I said. "I am more than glad that I
+could be of service. But now that the cabman is disposed of, how are
+you going to get into the house?"
+
+She turned and looked at the house dubiously.
+
+"I--don't--know. Unless I find an open window,--just a teeny one would
+be big enough. But Gene is very particular about my not being
+undignified. I think," she added, with a delightfully confidential
+smile, "that Gene would rather have me be dignified and hungry than
+undignified and comfortable. Under those circumstances would you
+advise me to hunt for an open window?"
+
+"It's a delicate point to decide. Who is Gene? That might have some
+bearing on the question."
+
+She looked surprised at my ignorance.
+
+"Oh, he's my brother,--my twin. He lives in that house. So does Mr.
+Ellison. He's my guardian. But it surely looks as though nobody were
+at home!"
+
+"Don't you live there, too?" I demanded in surprise.
+
+"Oh, no. I'm at Miss Elwood's school at Dunstan. I don't mean I am
+there this minute, because of course I am here; but I'm supposed
+to be there. I just came down to surprise Gene because it is our
+birthday--you see we have only one between us--and now I can't get
+in!" And she threw out her hands dramatically.
+
+(The worst part of trying to reproduce Miss Benbow's language
+accurately is that it sounds silly in type, but it never sounded silly
+when she was looking at you with her big, ambiguous eyes, and you were
+waiting, always in affectionate amusement, for the next absurdity. I
+sometimes wondered whether that frank air of hers was nature's
+disguise for a maid's subtlety, or whether her subtle witchery lay
+really in the fact that she was so transparent that you could see her
+thoughts breathe.)
+
+"I have always heard that it was wise," I said, with a grandfatherly
+air, "to save out at least a street-car fare before flinging all one's
+broad gold pieces to the beggar in the street."
+
+She looked a little startled, then swiftly comprehending. I knew she
+must have bit her inner lip to keep from smiling, but she spoke
+sedately.
+
+"A street-car fare wouldn't help me to get into the house, would it?
+And that's the trouble now. Though of course if I had had a street-car
+fare I shouldn't have had any trouble with the cabman and you wouldn't
+have had to come to the rescue, so another time I'll be careful and
+remember--"
+
+"Heavens, and they say a woman isn't logical!" I cried. "I hadn't
+thought out the sequence. I'm mighty glad that you were not wise when
+you flung away your purse since I was going to so profit by it. But
+now the question is, what are you going to do? I can't go off and
+leave you, like a charity child on the doorstep without a penny, not
+to mention a dinner. Haven't you any friends in the neighborhood?"
+
+"Not what you would call _friends_, exactly, though I suppose they
+wouldn't let me starve if they knew. There's a Mrs. Whyte,--"
+
+"Of course! In that red brick house next door. What luck! I'm going
+there for dinner."
+
+She glanced at my evening garb and drew down the corners of her lips
+comically. "She won't like having a charity child thrust upon her when
+she is having a dinner party."
+
+"Oh, that won't make the slightest difference in the world," I
+protested eagerly. "Mrs. Whyte is the kindest woman,--and besides,
+it's your birthday,--"
+
+She looked at me under her lashes. "You're just a man. You
+don't understand," she said, with large tolerance. "See how I am
+dressed,--shirt-waist and linen collar! I didn't prepare for a party.
+Oh, I believe Gene is having a birthday party somewhere,--that's why
+everybody is away! And me supperless! Isn't it a shame?" She looked at
+me with tragedy on her face,--and a delicious consciousness of its
+effectiveness in the corner of her eye.
+
+"Why didn't you come home earlier?" I asked, wondering (though it
+really wasn't my business) what she had been doing since I saw her
+leave Barney.
+
+"You mean after I left that perfectly beautiful old soldier? How did
+you know about him and me, by the way?"
+
+"Oh, I'm a friend of his, too. I happened to be quite near. My name,
+by the way, is Robert Hilton. I'll be much obliged if you'll remember
+it."
+
+"Why, of course I'll remember. My name is Jean Benbow, and it is so
+nearly the same as Gene's because we are twins, but really his name is
+Eugene, and when he does something to make himself famous I suppose
+they will call him that. Well, after the soldier, and I wish I had
+had fifty times as much to give him, though that makes a sum that I
+simply can't do in my head,--not that it matters, because he didn't
+get it,--I remembered that I was going to get a birthday present for
+Gene, but I didn't remember, you see, that I hadn't any money. I don't
+think money is a nice thing to have on your mind, anyway. So I went to
+a bookstore and looked at some books and the first thing I knew they
+were closing up, and I hadn't yet decided. Have you ever noticed how
+time just _flies_ when you are doing something you are interested in,
+and then if it is lessons or the day before a holiday or anything like
+that, how it literally _drags?_"
+
+"I have noticed that phenomenon,--and Time is giving an example of
+flying this very minute. Really, I think you'd better come over to
+Mrs. Whyte's--"
+
+
+"Oh, there's Minnie coming back now! She'll let me in," Miss Benbow
+interrupted me. A bareheaded young woman, from her dress evidently a
+housemaid, was hurriedly crossing the service court toward the Ellison
+back door, and without further words Miss Benbow started toward her
+across the lawn.
+
+"Wave your hand if it is all right. I'll wait," I called after her.
+
+The maid halted when she saw that fleet figure crossing the grass,
+they conferred a moment, then Miss Benbow waved a decisive hand to me,
+and they disappeared together in the rear of the house. Something ran
+through my brain about the ceasing of exquisite music,--I wished I
+could remember the exact words, because they seemed so to fit the
+occasion. Miss Benbow certainly had a way of keeping your attention on
+the _qui vive_.
+
+Even after I had made my bow before Mrs. Whyte and had been presented
+to the beautiful Miss Thurston, I had intervals of absent-mindedness
+during which I wondered what Miss Benbow could be doing all alone in
+that big house. This was all the more complimentary to her memory,
+because Miss Thurston was a young woman to occupy the whole of any
+man's attention under ordinary or even moderately extraordinary
+circumstances. I had to admit that this time Mrs. Whyte had played a
+masterstroke. And that does not spell overweening conceit on my part,
+either! It required no special astuteness to read the concealed
+cryptogram in Mrs. Whyte's plans. I had had experience! So, unless I
+made a wild guess, had Miss Thurston. There could be no other
+explanation, consistent with my self-respect, of the cold dignity, the
+pointed iciness, that marked her manner toward me. She was a stately
+young woman by nature, but mere stateliness does not lead a young
+woman to fling out signs of "Keep off the grass" when a young man is
+introduced. I guessed at once that she had experienced Mrs. Whyte's
+friendly interest in the same (occasionally embarrassing) way that I
+had, and that she wished me to understand from the beginning that she
+was not to be regarded as _particeps criminis_ in any schemes which
+Mrs. Whyte might be entertaining regarding my life, liberty, and
+happiness. Her intent was so clear that it amused as well as piqued
+me, and I set myself to being as good company as my limited gifts made
+possible. I knew that it was good policy, in such a case, to give Mrs.
+Whyte no reason for shaking her lovely locks at me afterwards; but
+partly I exerted myself to do my prettiest because Miss Thurston
+attracted me to an extraordinary degree. That does not indicate any
+special susceptibility on my part, either. She was (and is, I am happy
+to say,) one of the most charming women I have ever met. No, that is
+not the word. She made no effort to charm. She merely was. She wrapped
+herself in a veil of aloofness, sweet and cool, and looked out at you
+with a wistful, absent air that made you long to go into that chill
+chamber where she dwelt and kiss some warmth and tenderness upon her
+lips and a flash into her dreamy eye. I'm afraid that, in spite of my
+disclaimer, you will think me susceptible. Well, you may, then. I
+admit that I determined, within five minutes after my first bow, that
+I was not going to lose the advantage of knowing Miss Thurston, or
+permit her to forget me. (I cemented this determination before the
+evening was over with an act which had consequences I could never have
+anticipated.)
+
+I am not going to dwell in detail upon the incidents of that dinner,
+because I want to get to the extraordinary events that followed it;
+but there were one or two matters that I must mention, because of the
+bearing they had on after events.
+
+"I hear," said Mr. Whyte at a pause in the chatter, "that they are
+talking of nominating Clyde for mayor."
+
+I happened to be looking at Miss Thurston when he spoke, and I saw a
+sort of _breathless_ look come over her, as though every nerve were
+listening.
+
+"Do you think he would take it?" Mrs. Whyte asked.
+
+"That's the rub, confound the man. I don't understand Clyde. If ever
+there was a man fitted for public life, it is he. His father was
+governor, his grandfather was a United States senator, and he has all
+the qualities and faculties that made them distinguished. Yet here he
+buries himself in a private office and barricades himself against all
+public honors and preferment. I don't understand it."
+
+(I did. I had wondered myself, but now I understood.)
+
+"Perhaps he doesn't care for the sort of thing that other men value,"
+said Miss Thurston. I fancied a trace of bitterness under her sweet
+indifference.
+
+"It isn't that," said Mr. Whyte, frowningly. "He is thoroughly alive.
+And he doesn't keep out of public matters so long as he can work
+behind a committee. Everybody knows what he has done for the city
+without letting his name get into the papers. I think it's a crank
+notion he's got."
+
+"It probably goes back to some disappointing love affair," said Mrs.
+Whyte, impressively. "That sort of thing will take the ambition out of
+a man like--like poison."
+
+"But wouldn't we have heard of it?" asked Miss Thurston, lifting her
+penciled eyebrows. "We have known Kenneth Clyde all his life, you and
+I, and there never has been anything talked of--"
+
+"There wouldn't be," interrupted Mrs. Whyte. "He wouldn't talk. But
+what else, I ask you, could change the reckless, ambitious, arrogant
+boy that he was,--you know he was, Katherine,--into the abnormally
+modest man he has become,--"
+
+"I don't think he is abnormally modest," Miss Thurston interrupted in
+her turn. "He merely doesn't care for newspaper fame,--and who does?
+He has grown into a finer man than his early promise. If Saintsbury
+can get him for mayor,--"
+
+"He won't take it," Mr. Whyte said pessimistically. "You'd have to
+hypnotize him to make him accept."
+
+"Do you believe in hypnotism, Mr. Hilton?" Mrs. Whyte turned to me,
+evidently fearing that I would feel "out" of this intimate
+conversation.
+
+"Believe that it can be exercised? Why, yes, I suppose there is no
+doubt of that. But I don't believe I should care to let anyone
+experiment on me.
+
+"Fake. That's what it is," said Mr. Whyte. "Superstition."
+
+"Now, Carroll, I know you're terribly wise, but you don't know
+_everything_," said Mrs. Whyte. "I'm sure I sometimes know what you
+are thinking--"
+
+"That's telepathy, my angel, not hypnotism. Only you don't. You think
+you do, but I'll bet I could fool you nine times out of--nineteen!"
+
+"I once saw a girl who was hypnotized, and it was horrible," said Miss
+Thurston. "She was lying in a show window of a shop, home in
+Blankville. She had been put to sleep, I learned, by some hypnotist
+who was exhibiting on the vaudeville stage, and who invited people to
+come up from the audience. I could just imagine how the pretty, silly,
+ignorant girl had been dared to go up. Then he was to awaken her
+publicly on the stage after forty-eight hours, and in the meantime she
+was exhibited on a cot in the window of a shop as an advertisement. I
+can't make you understand how unspeakably _horrible_ it seemed to me."
+
+"Where do you suppose her soul was?" asked Mrs. Whyte curiously.
+
+"I don't know. But I know that there is something wicked about
+separating the soul and body. It is a partial murder."
+
+"Bet you she was shamming," said Mr. Whyte, cynically.
+
+"Oh, no, it was real,--terribly real," she cried. I had no opinions on
+the subject, but I thought Miss Thurston's earnestness very becoming,
+it brought such a spark into her dark eyes and broke up her rather
+severe tranquillity by a touch of undeniable feeling. But Mr. Whyte
+was unmoved.
+
+"My dear Katherine, if there were any secret means by which one person
+could control the will of another and make him do what the controlling
+will commanded, the trusts would have bought it up long ago. A
+knowledge of how to do that would be worth millions,--and the millions
+would be ready for the man who could teach the trick."
+
+"There are some things that money cannot buy," said Miss Thurston
+quietly.
+
+"I never happened to run across them," said the cynical Whyte.
+
+"I have happened to run across things enough that money _wouldn't_
+buy," said Mrs. Whyte, significantly.
+
+But Miss Thurston took up his challenge (which I guessed was flung out
+for that purpose) with a fervor that transformed her.
+
+"Money cannot buy knowledge," she cried. "To know how to control
+another's soul may be wicked knowledge,--I believe it is,--but it is
+knowledge nevertheless, and it is not at the command of your
+millionaires. Money cannot buy any of the best things in the world. It
+cannot buy love or loyalty or faith--or knowledge."
+
+"You talk like Ellison," said Whyte, with good-humored contempt. "He
+goes on about knowledge of hidden forces, and I believe he is ready to
+believe in every charlatan that comes along and claims to know about
+the mysteries of nature or how to extract gold from sea-water, or to
+use the sun's rays to run his automobile."
+
+"I'm glad he cares about something," said Mrs. Whyte, impatiently.
+"Certainly he doesn't care about anything human. He is a cold-blooded
+machine."
+
+"Well," said Whyte, judicially, "he has done pretty well by the Benbow
+children."
+
+"How has he done well by them? Eugene has grown up in his house, to be
+sure, but he has grown up without much help from his uncle, I can tell
+you that. And Jean has been poked off at school when she ought to have
+been coming out in society."
+
+"Miss Benbow is at home this evening," I contributed. "I happened to
+meet her on my way here. She said she had come down from school to
+celebrate her birthday with her brother."
+
+"Oh, is that so? Well, I'll warrant her uncle didn't know she was
+coming, nor will he know that she has been here when she is gone."
+
+"She strikes me as a young lady who would make her presence noticed,"
+I suggested.
+
+"She is a dear child," said Miss Thurston, warmly. "I must look her up
+to-morrow. I haven't seen much of her, but I know Gene, and I am
+devoted to him."
+
+Now do you wonder that I liked Miss Thurston? I liked her so much that
+I renewed my vow that she should not slip off into the outer circle of
+bowing acquaintanceship; and if she was afraid to be nice to me
+because she regarded me as in sympathy with Mrs. Whyte's matchmaking
+schemes, I would clear her mind of that apprehension without delay. I
+seized the opportunity immediately we were alone together.
+
+"It is more than kind of Mrs. Whyte to give me such a chance to know
+her friends," I said. We were supposed to be looking at Mr. Whyte's
+books,--which were worth seeing. "Just because a man is engaged is no
+sign that he doesn't enjoy pleasant society."
+
+"Oh!" she breathed.
+
+"Mrs. Whyte doesn't know," I said, looking at her steadily.
+
+She laughed softly, and a color and kindness came into her face that
+made her deliciously human.
+
+"I see! But there _is_ someone--?"
+
+"There certainly is," I said, and drew the little miniature of my
+mother from my pocket. "Don't let Mrs. Whyte see it." (She would have
+recognized it!)
+
+"How sweet she is!" she exclaimed. "I don't wonder!"
+
+"The sweetest woman I ever knew," I said, and took the locket back
+jealously. My jest somewhat irked me now, with those candid eyes
+looking surprise at me from the picture. "And now will you be friends
+with me, instead of treating me as though I probably needed a snubbing
+to keep me on my good behavior?"
+
+"The very best of friends," she cried, and laughed so merrily that Mr.
+Whyte, from the other side of the room, called out with interest,--
+
+"You young people seem to be having a very good time. What's the
+joke?"
+
+"Carroll!" Mrs. Whyte checked him in a warning undertone,--at which
+Miss Thurston and I looked at each other and laughed silently. I have
+no doubt the poor dear lady thought her plot was brewing beautifully.
+It was a shame to plot against her, but then it made her happy for the
+time. And it did most completely break down the icy barrier thrown out
+by Miss Thurston, so I tried to stifle the protests of my conscience.
+My judgment came later,--judgment, sentence, and execution. But I had
+a very good time that evening.
+
+I had ordered a taxicab at a quarter before ten, so that I might waste
+no time getting down to the Ph[oe]nix building for the appointment
+with Alfred Barker. As I went down the walk to the street, I glanced
+at the silent house in the next lot. There was no light in any window.
+I indulged in a moment's conjecture as to where Miss Benbow could be,
+but even as the thought went through my mind, I saw a light flare up
+in the corner room downstairs. Miss Benbow was exploring, then. Or the
+rest of the family had come home. Certainly I must manage somehow to
+see her again.
+
+But I confess I completely forgot both Miss Benbow and Miss Thurston
+as my cab whirled me down to the business part of town. I concentrated
+my mind on the question of how to deal with the blackmailer, and tried
+to prepare myself beforehand for his probable lines of attack or
+defense. At the same time I told myself judicially that the situation
+might develop in some unexpected way.
+
+It did. Most completely unexpected. I shall have to tell it in detail.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
+
+
+I went directly to the Ph[oe]nix Building, on the second floor of
+which Barker had his office under cover of the name of the Western
+Land and Improvement Company. The door was ajar, and the gas was
+burning inside, so I went in. The room was empty. I tried the door of
+an inner office, but found it locked, and by the curtained glass of
+the door I could see that there was no light in that room. I inferred
+that Barker had been called away, and had left the door open for
+Clyde.
+
+I closed the door, not wishing to have Barker see me from the hall and
+turn back, and sat down by the desk under the gaslight to await his
+return. On the desk were a few circulars of the Western Land and
+Improvement Company which looked as though they had served the purpose
+of giving verisimilitude to Mr. Barker's office for a long time. I
+guessed the same theatrical and decorative mission in the display
+baskets of apples, sheaves of heavy-headed wheat, and samples of other
+grains and fruits which adorned the room--though somewhat dustily. I
+had soon exhausted the visible means of supporting meditation, and my
+thoughts went back to the evening at the Whytes'. I took my mother's
+miniature from my pocket, and looked at it with a rueful consciousness
+that she would most sweetly and conclusively disapprove of the use
+which I had made of her counterfeit. She would ask if my legal
+training had so perverted my instinct for simple truth that I could
+justify sophistries like that!
+
+I had been lecturing myself in her name for some minutes, holding the
+miniature up before me to give point to the lesson, when I suddenly
+had that queer feeling--you know it--of being watched. I felt I was
+not alone. I jumped to my feet and looked about me. The room was quite
+empty except for the desk, a chair or two besides mine, and the
+baskets of fruit and grain which stood on a low table by the window.
+If there was any person on the premises, he must be in the unlighted
+inner room with the locked door. Instantly it flashed upon me that
+Barker was probably in there, waiting for Clyde. He had so arranged
+things that, hidden himself, he could survey the outer room, and when
+I entered instead of Clyde, he simply lay perdu. In that case, there
+was no use waiting for his return by way of the hall! I returned the
+locket to my pocket, looked ostentatiously at my watch, picked up my
+cane, and left the room. He would suppose my patience exhausted.
+
+But I did not go down the stairs. Instead I walked to the end of a
+short diverging hall which commanded a view of the door. If Barker was
+inside, he would have to come out sometime, unless he took the fire
+escape, and I could wait as late as he could. I wanted to meet him,
+also I wanted to see if my queer sensation of being watched had any
+foundation in fact.
+
+I had waited perhaps fifteen minutes when the rattle of the elevator
+broke the silence. It stopped at the second floor, and a man came
+rapidly down the main hall and turned toward the office of the W.L.&I.
+Co. It was Barker himself! I recognized him perfectly. So my
+intuitions had been merely a feminine case of nerves! I was not a
+little disgusted with myself.
+
+I lingered a few moments, (so as to give Barker a chance to see that
+he had not kept me waiting), then I sauntered slowly in the direction
+of the office. I was opposite the elevator when I was startled by a
+shot. For a moment I did not realize that the sound came from Barker's
+room. When I did, I made a jump toward it, and the elevator man, who
+had been waiting since Barker got out, came only a step behind me. We
+pushed the door open,--it yielded at once,--and there, outstretched on
+the floor, lay Barker. I dropped on my knee beside him and turned him
+over. He turned astonished and inquiring eyes upon me, and made a
+slight motion with his hand, but even while I was holding up his head,
+the consciousness faded from his eyes, his head fell forward, and I
+knew it was a dead man whom I laid down upon the bare floor of his
+dingy office. I had never before seen a man die, and the solemnity of
+the event swept everything else out of my mind for the moment. But
+soon I began to realize the situation.
+
+"Do you see a weapon anywhere about?" I asked the elevator man,
+glancing myself about the room.
+
+"No, sir. There ain't none."
+
+"Then he was murdered, and his murderer is in there," I said in a low
+voice, indicating the inner office by a glance.
+
+The man immediately backed toward the door,--and I didn't blame him.
+It gives one a curious feeling to think of interfering with someone
+who has no restraining prejudices against taking the life of people
+with whom he is displeased. But for the credit of my superior
+civilization, I could not join the retreat.
+
+"I'm going in," I said, and laid my hand on the doorknob. The door was
+locked.
+
+"Is there anyone on this floor at this time?" I asked the elevator
+man. "No, sir."
+
+"Or in the building?"
+
+"The watchman."
+
+"Find him. Or, first, telephone to the police station. Then send the
+watchman here and then go out on the street and try to find a
+policeman. Bring in anybody who looks equal to breaking in the door.
+I'll wait here and see that he doesn't get out--if I can prevent it."
+
+The man seemed glad to go, and I took a position at one side of the
+inner door with my hand on the back of a stout office chair. An
+unarmed man does feel at a disadvantage before a gun! The very silence
+seemed full of menace.
+
+In a few minutes there was a sound of running feet in the hall, and
+the watchman came in.
+
+"He won't be in there by this time," he said at once. "The fire escape
+runs by the window!" And with the courage of assured safety he opened
+the door with a pass key. The room was empty, and the window, open to
+the fire escape, showed that the watchman's surmise was justified. The
+escape ran down to an alley that opened in turn upon the street. The
+murderer could have made his descent and joined the theater crowds on
+the street without the slightest difficulty. He had had at least ten
+minutes' clear time before we looked vainly out into the night after
+him.
+
+We were still at the window when the police arrived,--the officer on
+the beat, whom the elevator man had soon found, and a sergeant with
+another man from the station. The sergeant took charge.
+
+"Man dead," he said briefly. "And the murderer gone by the window, eh?
+Tell me what you know about it."
+
+I told him the facts as I have given them above. He lit the gas in the
+private office and examined the door between the rooms.
+
+"Easy enough," he said.
+
+The upper half of the door consisted of four panes of glass, behind
+which hung a flimsy curtain. But the lower right-hand pane was gone,
+leaving merely an open space before the curtain.
+
+"He sat here watching for him through the curtain,--dark in here,
+light on the outside,--and then, when he came in, he shot through this
+opening without unlocking the door, dropped the curtain, and quietly
+went out by the window. He could be five blocks from here by the time
+you telephoned, and where he may be now,--well, the devil knows. Here
+is where he sat waiting."
+
+We all looked with interest at the inner room. A chair had been drawn
+up in front of the door and beside it was a table with a basket of
+apples on it. The murderer had been munching apples while waiting for
+his victim! The peelings and cores had been dropped into an office
+waste-basket beside the chair. It was a curious detail, gruesome just
+because it was so commonplace and matter of fact. I shivered as I
+turned away.
+
+By this time the coroner had arrived. He immediately took possession
+of the premises. I followed his every movement as he went from one
+room to the other, for I was by no means easy in my mind as to the
+revelations that might develop. If Barker had committed any of his
+profitable secrets to writing, his death would not of necessity clear
+the slate for Kenneth Clyde! But they did not seem to make any
+compromising discoveries. The desk in the outer office held nothing
+whatsoever but the decoy circulars which I had already examined, a
+dried bottle of ink, and some unused pens and penholders. The inner
+office held a cheap wooden table, but the drawer in it was empty.
+There was nothing on the table but the basket of apples. The coroner
+then went through Barker's pockets. He laid out on the floor, and then
+listed in a note-book, these items:
+
+A worn purse, with eighty dollars in bills.
+
+Three dollars and fifteen cents in loose change.
+
+A ring with six keys.
+
+A narrow memorandum book, worn on the edges.
+
+A pocket-knife, handkerchief, and a small comb.
+
+There were no papers. Barring the note-book, there was nothing
+identifying about the dead man's possessions. I longed to get that
+into my hands.
+
+"Perhaps this will give some clue as to his associates," I said,
+boldly picking it up.
+
+But the coroner was not a man to be interfered with. He promptly took
+it out of my hands, and tied it with the other articles into Barker's
+handkerchief with a severely official air.
+
+"That will be examined into in due time," he said. "Officer, you can
+take the body down and then lock the rooms and give me the keys."
+
+I watched while they carried the limp form down to the waiting patrol
+wagon, and saw the police sergeant place the seal of the law upon the
+place. I was at least as much interested as the coroner in seeing that
+no enterprising reporter, for example, should have an opportunity to
+spring a sensational story involving more reputable people than
+Barker.
+
+As I turned up the empty street, I looked at my watch. It was half
+past twelve. Clyde's appointment with Barker had been for ten, and I
+had heard the town clock strike as I turned into the Ph[oe]nix
+Building. When had he been shot? I could not be sure. I had waited for
+some time, perhaps an hour, before I had had that curious sensation of
+being watched and had gone out into the hall. I _had_ been watched!
+The eyes of the murderer in the darkened room had been fixed upon me
+under the gaslight, while he waited. What would have happened if I had
+stayed in the room? Would he have shot his victim just the same?
+Probably. The locked door between would in any event have given him
+the minute he needed to gain the fire-escape. He had planned it well.
+It was all so perfectly simple.
+
+A great criminologist once said that every crime, like the burrowings
+of an underground animal, leaves marks on the surface by which its
+course can be traced. Perhaps. But it takes eyes to see. I didn't know
+whether I most hoped or feared that the course of Barker's murderer
+would be traced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+CROSSED WIRES
+
+
+When I awoke the next morning from a short and unrestful interval of
+sleep, it was with an oppressive sense of something being wrong. Then
+I remembered. Wrong it was, certainly, but it was not my affair. The
+only way in which it touched me (so I thought then) was as it affected
+my client, Clyde. How would he take the news? I imagined his receiving
+it in one way and another, and I felt that there were embarrassing
+contingencies connected with the matter. Finally I determined to call
+him up by my room telephone, if possible, and tell him the news as
+news. I rang him up, therefore, before going down to my breakfast.
+
+Perhaps "Central" was sleepy or tired, or the wires were crossed at
+some unknown point on the circuit. I didn't get Clyde and I couldn't
+attract Central's attention after the first response, though I shook
+the receiver and made remarks. Then suddenly, across the silence, out
+of space and into space, a man's voice spoke with passion:
+
+"But Barker is dead, I tell you! You are free! Now will you marry me?"
+
+And then again the buzzing silence of the "dead" wires!
+
+Talk about the benefits of modern inventions! They don't come without
+their compensating disadvantages. I hung to that telephone till
+Central finally woke up and sleepily inquired if I were "waiting."
+
+"Who was on this wire just now?" I demanded.
+
+"Nobody," she said sweetly.
+
+I called for "Information," and laid the case before that encyclopedic
+sphinx. Someone had been talking across my wire and in the interests
+of justice and everything else that would appeal to her, I must know
+who it was. With a rising accent and perfect temper she assured me
+that she didn't know, that no one knew, that if they knew they
+wouldn't tell, and that I probably had been dreaming, anyhow. I knew
+better than that, but I saw that there was no way of getting the
+information from her. I should have to go to headquarters,--and then
+probably the girl would not be able to answer. But who was it that
+knew, before the papers were fairly on the street, that Barker was
+dead? Who was it that would cry, with passion, "_Now_ will you marry
+me?" I gave up the attempt to get Clyde, and went down to breakfast.
+
+I had a suite of rooms in a private family hotel where everybody knew
+everybody else, and as I entered the common breakfast room I was
+assailed by questions. Never before had I so completely held the
+center of the stage! I could hardly get a moment myself to read the
+account in the paper which had set them all to gossiping. It was
+fairly accurate. The police reporter had his story from headquarters.
+It was not until I read at the end, "At this writing the police have
+found no clue," that I realized, by my sense of relief, the anxiety
+with which I had followed the report.
+
+I wanted to see Clyde, but I thought it best to go to my own office
+first, and communicate with him from there. Fellows had not arrived
+when I reached there,--the first time in years that I had known him to
+be late. When he came he looked excited, though with his usual
+stoicism he tried to conceal all evidence of his feelings.
+
+"Well, your friend Barker has met with his come-up-ance," I said at
+last, knowing he would not speak.
+
+"Yes," he assented, and a nervous smile twitched his lips
+involuntarily. "But not at the hands of the law. I told you the law
+couldn't reach him."
+
+"The law will probably reach the man who did it."
+
+Fellows did not speak for a moment. Then he said slowly, "He was
+killed as justly as though it had been done under the order of the
+court. Shall I look up these cases for you now, Mr. Hilton?"
+
+"Was Barker married?" I asked abruptly, disregarding his readiness to
+get to work.
+
+"I don't know." He looked surprised.
+
+"I wish you would find out. Also, if possible, who she is, where she
+lives, any gossip about her,--everything possible."
+
+"How shall I find out?"
+
+"Oh, I leave that to you," I said confidently. Fellows was not learned
+in law books, but he was a great fellow for finding out things. I was
+usually content to accept the results without inquiring too closely
+how he obtained them.
+
+"All right," he said, shortly. Some minutes later he looked up from
+his work to remark, with his familiar bitterness, "I suppose, like as
+not, he has a wife who will be heart-broken over his death, scoundrel
+as he was, though if he had once been in prison no woman would look at
+him."
+
+I had been thinking. "I'm not so sure she will be heart-broken, but
+you might find out about that, with the other things. Now call up Mr.
+Clyde's office, and find out if he can see me if I come over."
+
+"Mr. Clyde is ready to see you," he reported after a minute.
+
+I went over at once,--the distance was not great. Clyde was alone, and
+he looked up and nodded when I entered. His manner was pleasant
+enough, yet I was instantly aware of something of reserve that had not
+been there at our former interview. "He is sorry he took me into his
+confidence, now that it has turned out this way," I thought to myself.
+
+"Well, somebody saved us the trouble of paying further attention to
+Mr. Barker," he said lightly.
+
+"So it seems."
+
+"Did you speak to him at all?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I didn't know but that you might have seen him since--since I spoke
+to you about him."
+
+"I did see him the other day, but not to speak to him." And I told him
+of the incident in the Ph[oe]nix Building. He listened with close
+attention.
+
+"I have no doubt he had enemies on all sides," he said with a certain
+tone of satisfaction. "From what we know of his methods, it is easy to
+guess that. He has lived an underground life for years, but always
+keeping on the safe side of the law. His end was bound to come sooner
+or later."
+
+"Do you know whether he was married?"
+
+"I don't know. How should I?"
+
+"I merely wondered." For some reason I did not care to repeat that
+puzzling communication I had heard over the phone.
+
+"I know nothing about him. If he has any family, they will probably
+come forward to claim the body. But I doubt very much that the man who
+fired the shot will ever be taken."
+
+"What makes you so sure?"
+
+"He planned things carefully. And he is probably supported this minute
+by a sense of right,--and my sympathies are with him."
+
+He flung up his head with open defiance of my supposed prejudices.
+
+"Don't forget that Barker may have committed some of his valuable
+secrets to writing," I warned.
+
+He looked startled for a moment, then he threw up his head.
+
+"I don't believe it. He's dead, and a good job done."
+
+It was not my place to croak on such an occasion, but as I walked down
+the street to my own office, I reflected that the law would not look
+at a shot from ambush in that light, no matter what the judgment of
+the Lord might be.
+
+I stopped at Barney's stand for my buttonhole rose,--and at once I
+knew, by the gleam in his eye, that he had something special to tell
+me.
+
+"So it's yourself is the celebrity this morning, Mr. Hilton," he said
+eagerly.
+
+"I? Oh, no. I wasn't killed and didn't kill anybody."
+
+"But ye know a power about the happenin's, I'll be bound."
+
+"Yes, I know as much as anybody does," I said, supposing that he
+wanted to ask me about some particular.
+
+"It's the hard and revengeful heart he must have, and him so young, to
+shoot a man that the law has set right," said Barney, craftily.
+
+"What?" I said sharply. "What do you mean, Barney?--if you mean
+anything!"
+
+"Sure, an' I can't be tellin' ye anything that ye didn't know!"
+
+"Have they found the murderer?" I asked, yet with a nervous dread of
+his answer.
+
+"Divil a bit. He found himself, and couldn't keep the secret," Barney
+said, entirely happy in being able to give me this surprising
+information. "The officer on the beat this morning tould me that the
+whole departmint fell over itself when the young lad walked into the
+station with his head up like a play-actin' gossoon, and says, 'I
+killed him for that he killed me fayther.' The exthra will be out by
+now."
+
+I heard the boys calling an extra as he spoke, and I waited and
+beckoned the first one that hove into sight. There, on the glaring
+front, I read:
+
+
+   "MURDERER CONFESSES
+    Eugene Benbow gives himself up
+         to the Police.
+       Fired the Fatal Shot
+       to Avenge his Father.
+
+   "Barker killed Senator Benbow ten years ago and was acquitted on the
+plea of self-defense.
+
+
+"The slayer of Alfred Barker has been found. Driven by the spur of a
+guilty conscience, he gives himself up to the police. The fatal shot
+was fired by Eugene Benbow, the son of Senator Josephus Benbow, who
+was shot and killed by Barker in Saintsbury just ten years ago.
+
+"Senator Benbow, whose home was in Deming, was in attendance on the
+State Legislature when he fell foul of Barker, who was trying to lobby
+through a measure which Benbow did not hesitate to call a steal. He
+was instrumental in defeating Barker's measure, and this led to
+bitterness and threats on both sides. One day they met on the street,
+and after some hot words Barker drew his revolver and shot Benbow
+dead. When brought to trial, he succeeded in convincing the jury that
+he believed (?) his life to be in danger from a motion which Benbow
+made toward his pocket, although it was proved that the senator was,
+as a matter of fact, unarmed.
+
+"Young Benbow was at that time a lad of ten. The tragedy made a deep
+impression upon him, and he grew up, dreaming of revenge. Yesterday he
+heard that Barker was in town, and at once armed himself. Last night
+he carried his deadly purpose into effect.
+
+"It seems that after shooting Barker in his office in the Ph[oe]nix
+Building, young Benbow returned to the rooms which he occupies in the
+house of Mr. Howard Ellison, who is his guardian and a distant
+relative. He spent the night there, and apparently decided then to
+give himself up, for he appeared at police headquarters at half-past
+six, in a highly nervous condition, and astonished the sergeant by
+declaring himself the person who shot Alfred Barker. The special
+officers who had been detailed to investigate the murder have been
+recalled."
+
+
+"The poor little girl!" I said to myself. The vision of Jean Benbow as
+I had seen her last night, gallant and boyish, rose before me. This
+would be a terrible morning for her. I do not often make the mistake
+of rushing in where I know that only angels may safely tread, yet I
+was filled with a well-nigh irresistible impulse to go and look out
+for her. That was absurd, of course, since she was with friends,--only
+I should have liked some assurance that they would understand her! I
+hardly thought of her brother, though, since he was her twin, he could
+be nothing but a boy, and certainly presented a touching figure, with
+his medieval ideas of personal vengeance.
+
+But I was to have ample occasion to think of Eugene. Before the
+morning was over, Mr. Howard Ellison's card was brought to me. Mr.
+Ellison, who followed his card, was elderly, rather small and somewhat
+bent, but alert mentally and active physically. He had the dry, keen,
+impersonal aspect of a student, and I could see at a glance why Mrs.
+Whyte thought him cold-blooded. He was given to a sarcastic turn of
+speech which heightened this impression--and did him an injustice if,
+as a matter of fact, he was especially tender-hearted.
+
+"You have probably seen the papers this morning, Mr. Hilton."
+
+I bowed.
+
+"I have come to see if you will undertake that young fool's defense.
+As his guardian, I suppose it devolves on me to see that he is
+provided with a lawyer."
+
+I am not in criminal practice, and ordinarily I should not have cared
+for such a retainer, but in this instance I did not hesitate for a
+moment.
+
+"I shall be very glad to do so."
+
+"That's all right, then. You look after things, and let me know if
+there is anything I have to know. I am engaged in some important
+researches, and it is most inconvenient to have interruptions, but of
+course in such a case I shall have to put up with it."
+
+"Possibly you may even find them interesting," I said, in amaze. He
+took me up at once.
+
+"Events are not interesting, Mr. Hilton. They are merely
+happenings,--unrelated and unintelligent. Take this case. Gene
+dislikes Barker. That is interesting in a measure, although it is
+rather obvious. But he goes and shoots him, and what is there
+interesting in that? It is the mere explosive event. Besides,
+Gene was a fool to go and tell the police about it. That was
+hardly--gentlemanly."
+
+"I suppose it weighed on his conscience."
+
+"Conscience,--fiddlededee! What is conscience? Merely your idea of
+what someone else would think about you if he knew. If you are
+satisfied yourself that your actions are justified, what have you to
+do with the opinions of other people or the upbraidings of conscience?
+If it was right to kill Barker, it was sheer foolishness to tell."
+
+"Do you think it is ever right to kill?"
+
+"Young man, your experience of life is limited if you can put that
+question seriously and sincerely. I studied surgery as a young man and
+spent three years in a hospital in Vienna. After that I was for two
+years connected with the English army in India. I have no foolish
+prejudices left about taking life--when necessary."
+
+"You have belonged to privileged classes," I said, striving to match
+his nonchalance. "But unfortunately your young cousin does not."
+
+"No, he has been merely a young fool," he said concisely. "But Jean
+insisted that I should come and see you about it. She is his sister."
+
+"I am honored by Miss Benbow's confidence," I said. I felt a good deal
+more than I expressed. If I didn't do the best that could be done for
+her brother, it would be merely because I didn't know how. "Will you
+tell me something about the young man? He lives with you?"
+
+"Yes. He has the library for his study. Of course he has the run of
+the house. The only stipulation I ever made was that he should keep
+out of my way and not distract my mind. This is the consideration
+which he shows!"
+
+"How long has he lived with you?"
+
+"Why, ever since the family was broken up. Barker shot Senator Benbow,
+you know, and his wife died soon after. Shock. You know, there is
+something interesting in the question how a purely mental blow can
+have effect on the physical plane. Well, Benbow was a cousin, and as
+my own wife was dead, there seemed to be plenty of room in the house
+for the boy, so I took him. I supposed he would grow up the way other
+boys did. I simply told him never to bother me. For the rest he could
+do as he liked."
+
+"He seems to have followed your teaching. How old is he?"
+
+"Just twenty. It was his birthday yesterday. He was celebrating last
+night with some of his college mates."
+
+"How? Where, and with whom?"
+
+"At his Fraternity House. They had a supper for him. He is a senior at
+Vandeventer College."
+
+"I see. You were out for dinner, too, last night, were you not?"
+
+He looked up sharply, surprised, almost suspicious. "How do you know
+that?"
+
+"I understood that no one was at home."
+
+"Well, you are right, though I don't remember telling you. I had
+dinner at the club to meet a distinguished professor of psychology who
+is here. It is a subject in which I am interested."
+
+"May I ask who compose your household?"
+
+"Me, first. Then Gene. Then Mrs. Crosswell, the housekeeper, and
+Minnie, the houseworker. There's a yardman and a laundress, but they
+don't live in the house."
+
+"Were both the women away last night?"
+
+"No, Minnie was at home. Mrs. Crosswell has been away for a few days."
+
+"Miss Benbow arrived last night."
+
+"Yes, I believe so. I didn't see her till this morning. She came
+rushing into my room most inconsiderately with this confounded report
+in her hand,--the paper, I mean. What possessed Gene to do such a
+thing--"
+
+"He must have been laboring under some excitement that carried him
+away--"
+
+"Man, I am not talking about the shooting. That may or may not have
+been justified. But why he should make all this trouble by going to
+the police!"
+
+"Do you know if anything happened at his supper to excite him?"
+
+"Yes. His chum, Al Chapman, has been in to see me. It seems that some
+one spoke of seeing Alfred Barker, and it upset Gene. He came away
+early."
+
+"What sort of a boy is he? Violent? Revengeful?"
+
+"I can't say that I have noticed. He never bothered me much. I have an
+idea that he is a pretty hard student,--"
+
+"Has he been working hard?--overstraining himself?"
+
+He grinned. "Brainstorm idea? Well, perhaps you might work it. He has
+been doing a little extra Latin with a tutor. You might make the most
+of that."
+
+"Who is his tutor?"
+
+"Mr. Garney. One of the instructors at Vandeventer."
+
+I made a note of Mr. Garney's name, also of Al Chapman's.
+
+"You don't think of anything else that I ought to know,--anything
+having a bearing on Benbow's actions or his state of mind?"
+
+He hesitated, looked at me and shifted his eyes to the window, and
+finally pursed up his lips and shook his head. "No."
+
+"Then let us go down to the jail so that I can meet my client."
+
+We went down together to the jail and were admitted to see Eugene
+Benbow. Certainly he did not look like a murderer as we are apt to
+picture one. He was a tall, slender youth, with a sensitive face, and
+in spite of his nervousness he had the best manners I ever saw. He was
+sitting with his face in his hands when we came in, but he sprang to
+his feet at once with a self-forgetful courtesy that made him seem
+like an anxious host rather than a prisoner.
+
+"So good of you to come, Uncle Howard," he murmured. "I--I'm afraid I
+have disturbed you,--I'm so sorry,--"
+
+"Sorry!" snorted Mr. Ellison. "Much good it does to think of that now.
+And what you ever expected to have come from your going to the police
+with that story--Well, there's no use talking. This is Mr. Hilton,
+Gene. He is a lawyer, and he is going to look after your case, now
+that you're in for it."
+
+Eugene bowed. "Oh, that's most kind of you. It won't be any trouble?
+I'm so sorry to put you to any inconvenience--"
+
+"Don't let that disturb you," I said. "Mr. Ellison was kind enough to
+think I might be of use,--"
+
+"And now I'll leave you to talk things over," said Mr. Ellison,
+plainly anxious to get away. "When I'm wanted, you know where to call
+on me, Mr. Hilton." And he hurried away.
+
+"That's what I wanted," I said, cheerfully. I could see that the boy
+was in so nervous a condition that the first necessity was to steady
+him. "We want to talk this over together. You know, of course, that
+anything and everything that you tell me is in professional
+confidence, and that you should not hesitate to be perfectly frank."
+
+"I have nothing to hide," he said. "If you will tell me what you want
+to know,--"
+
+"When did the idea of killing Barker come to you?" I asked, watching
+him closely.
+
+An involuntary shudder ran through him at my words, but he answered at
+once and with apparent frankness. "I don't know. I don't remember
+thinking of it at all. Beforehand, I mean."
+
+"When did you think of it?"
+
+"Why, when I woke up. Then I remembered."
+
+"You mean that you went home and went to sleep last night?"
+
+"Yes. Not to bed. I threw myself down on the couch in the library
+and went to sleep with my clothes on. It was about five when I woke
+up--and remembered. Then I had to wait,--" He looked at me with
+anxious appeal for understanding,--"I _had_ to wait until some one
+would be up at the station,--"
+
+"Tell me what you were doing yesterday. It was your twentieth
+birthday, Mr. Ellison says."
+
+"Yes. Why, I attended lectures at the U all forenoon. Then after lunch
+Mr. Garney came over for an hour,--he's tutoring me in Latin. At four
+I went to the Gym,--guess I was there about an hour. Then I went home
+and read awhile, until it was time to go to the Frat house for supper.
+The fellows were giving me a spread because it was my birthday."
+
+"Did anything come up that annoyed you? Was anything said--about
+Barker, for instance?"
+
+The boy frowned. "Yes. Grig--I mean Jim Gregory--said that he saw
+Barker in town the other day. The other fellows shut him up. Grig is
+new here. He didn't know how it would make me feel."
+
+"How _did_ it make you feel?"
+
+The boy's slim white hands were gripping the edges of his chair
+nervously. "Desperate," he said, in a voice to match. "Here I was,
+singing and laughing and drinking and having a jolly time, and there
+was my father dead, shot down and unavenged,--oh, it all seemed
+suddenly horrible to me. I couldn't stay."
+
+"You went away early, then. What time was it?"
+
+"I don't know. I never thought of looking. Does it make any
+difference?"
+
+"I don't know that it does. Then what did you do? Did you go direct to
+the Ph[oe]nix Building?"
+
+He frowned thoughtfully. "No, I must have gone home first, mustn't I?
+Yes, of course I went home. My revolver was there. I went into the
+library and threw myself down on the couch to think it out,--and
+then--why, then I must have got my revolver and gone out."
+
+"Was your revolver in the library?"
+
+"Yes. In the table drawer. Uncle Howard gave it to me that morning, in
+the library, and I just locked it into the drawer."
+
+"By the way, how did you know that Barker's office was in the
+Ph[oe]nix Building?"
+
+"I don't know. I just knew it, somehow."
+
+"What made you think that he would be there at that time of the night?
+It wouldn't be likely, under ordinary circumstances."
+
+"I don't know. I didn't think. I suppose I just took it for granted."
+He looked puzzled and anxious, as though he were afraid that he was
+not answering my questions satisfactorily.
+
+"What did you have to drink at your spread?" I asked, thinking that
+perhaps there might be some explanation in that direction for his
+vague recollections.
+
+"Oh, champagne," he said, quickly.
+
+"Did you drink much?"
+
+"Two glasses, I think."
+
+"Are you accustomed to champagne?"
+
+"I've taken it only once or twice before."
+
+"Then I don't wonder that your memory is not quite clear. But tell me
+what you can of your movements. I want to follow your actions from the
+time you left the house."
+
+He leaned forward, one elbow resting on the table between us, and
+fixed his eyes with anxious intentness on a crack in the floor.
+
+"I went down to the Ph[oe]nix Building--"
+
+"Did you walk?"
+
+He hesitated a moment. "Yes."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"I went up to Barker's office on the second floor,--"
+
+"How did you know that it was his office? Excuse my interrupting, but
+I want to follow all the details. Barker's name wasn't on the door."
+
+"I don't remember how I knew. Perhaps I asked somebody."
+
+"Whom?"
+
+"I don't remember that I did ask. But I knew the place. I went in
+through the outer office to an inner room. There was no one there. I
+locked the door between the two rooms and waited inside for Barker to
+come. There was a light in the outer office, but the room I was in was
+lit only by the light that came in through the glass door between the
+two rooms. There was a curtain over this glass door, and I pulled it
+aside to watch. A man came in, sat down and waited awhile, and then
+went away. Then Barker came. I fired through the door,--one of the
+little panes of glass was broken, and I fired through that. Then--then
+I opened the window and climbed down the fire-escape and got out into
+the street. There were crowds of people going home from the theaters,
+and I fell in with the crowd."
+
+"And went home?"
+
+"Yes." He drew a sigh, as of relief, and looked up at me.
+
+It is one of the indications that this universe is under divine
+direction that a lie cannot masquerade successfully for the truth for
+an extended period. As Eugene talked, it had been coming more and more
+strongly into my mind that he was not telling the truth. He was going
+too cautiously. He seemed to be picking his way among uncertainties
+with a studious design to present only irrefutable facts to my
+scrutiny. And yet the accident that had put me on the other side of
+that closed door should enable me to refute some of his facts, it
+seemed to me. I felt that I must make sure.
+
+"You say that a man came into the office and waited awhile and then
+went away. Did you know him?"
+
+"No. He was a stranger."
+
+"Would you know him if you saw him?" He hesitated. "No, I think not. I
+can't recall his face."
+
+"Or how he was dressed? Business suit, or evening dress?"
+
+"Oh, business suit, I should think."
+
+"You naturally would think so,--unless you knew," I added to myself.
+Then I asked abruptly, "Are you fond of apples, Mr. Benbow?"
+
+He looked surprised and politely puzzled. "Apples?"
+
+"Yes. Raw apples."
+
+"No, I don't care for them."
+
+"But you eat them?"
+
+"Why, no, I don't, as it happens. I don't like them."
+
+"Now let's go back to Barker's office," I said, thinking hard. "Can
+you describe the office,--the arrangement of the furniture, for
+instance?"
+
+He dropped his eyes again to the floor, and frowned intently, as
+though he were searching his memory. But in a moment he looked up with
+a whimsical, deprecatory smile. "I'm afraid I can't! I can't seem to
+remember things connectedly. Do you suppose it was the champagne?"
+
+"That is possible," I said, thoughtful in my turn. It was quite
+possible that the champagne _was_ accountable for his vagueness. Then
+I remembered another point. "You say that you went home after you
+climbed down the fire-escape."
+
+"Yes. Not at once, I think. I seem to remember walking the streets."
+
+"When you woke up this morning, where were you?"
+
+"On the couch in the library."
+
+"Dressed?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you threw yourself down there when you came in and went to
+sleep, just as you did earlier in the evening, when you came home from
+the supper?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"When you woke up and remembered what you had done, you wanted to give
+yourself up at once to the police?"
+
+"Yes, of course. A gentleman would have to do that, wouldn't he?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," I said, with gravity to match his own. "But why didn't
+you think of doing that last night?"
+
+He looked nonplussed. "I--don't know! I couldn't have been quite
+myself." Then he looked up earnestly. "But if I remember shooting
+Barker, that is the main thing, isn't it?"
+
+"I'm afraid so," I said, looking at him steadily. "You _do_ remember
+that?"
+
+"Yes. Distinctly." But he looked absent and thoughtful, as though the
+memory were not quite as clear as his words would imply.
+
+"By the way, how did you know Barker when he came in?"
+
+A sharp change came over his expression. His young face looked set and
+stern as that of an avenging angel. "I was by my father's side when
+Barker shot him," he said quietly.
+
+"I didn't know. I can understand your feeling. But this idea of
+avenging him,--have you cherished it all these years?"
+
+"No, not in that way," he said thoughtfully. "I think it just came
+over me of a sudden."
+
+"What did you do with the revolver afterwards?"
+
+"I threw it into an alley as I went by." (It was never found.)
+
+"You spoke to no one of your plan?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And there was no one with you? You were quite alone all the time?"
+
+"I was quite alone."
+
+I talked with him for some time, but there was nothing more definitely
+bearing upon the problem which was forming in my mind,--and which was
+a very different problem from the question how to handle the case of a
+confessed murderer. I went away with this new and puzzling question
+putting everything else out of my mind,--Was his confession true? Of
+course on the face of it, the question looked absurd. Men don't go
+about confessing to crimes they have not committed,--unless there is
+some powerful reason for their belying themselves. If Eugene Benbow
+was lying, he had chosen his position well to escape detection. I
+could see that it would have been hard to defend him in the face of
+such circumstantial evidence as surrounded him, if he had been
+arrested on suspicion instead of on his own confession. And yet--I
+could not get rid of the idea that he was concealing or inventing
+something which might put a very different light on things. He might
+not have recognized me as the man who sat waiting in Barker's office,
+he might even have failed to notice that I was in evening dress, but
+how explain away the eaten apple? A man very fond of apples might have
+eaten one while waiting and given no special thought to the matter,
+but a man who didn't like apples wouldn't pick one up casually and eat
+it without taking notice of what he was doing. And those apple parings
+were quite fresh. That was a small but obstinate fact. I could not
+forget it. Had someone been with Benbow? Then I remembered his
+vagueness, his failure to identify me as the strange visitor, and I
+was inclined to change my question to--Had Benbow been there at all?
+
+And yet what possible motive could he have for making a false
+confession? The only reasonable explanation would be that he was
+trying to shield someone. But no one else had as yet been accused. The
+psychology of that situation was not complete. I must try to
+understand the boy's nature, before theorizing.
+
+And, first of all, I must verify my facts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+BERTILLON METHODS AND SOME OTHERS
+
+
+The first thing to do, I saw clearly, was to go back to Barker's
+office and verify my recollections of the place, particularly of the
+apple peelings. Fortune favored me. The rooms had been locked up the
+night before by the police, and were therefore undisturbed, and the
+chief did not hesitate, under the present conditions, to give me the
+keys.
+
+"Our work is done," he said complacently. "The murderer is found."
+
+I didn't remind him that the force had had precious little to do with
+putting Eugene Benbow behind bars. I took the keys and went to the
+place of the tragedy.
+
+I let myself into the office, and locked the door after me, so that I
+might be undisturbed during my examination. It looked quite as bare
+and unattractive as I remembered it. Here was the chair and table
+where I had sat examining my mother's locket when I had received that
+curious impression of being watched. I examined the glass door between
+the two rooms and sat down in the chair which had been drawn up near
+it, in the inner office. It commanded a full view of the outer office;
+and the curtain which fell over the glass made the fact that one pane
+was broken unnoticeable. Here the assassin sat and watched me, and
+here he had sat when Barker entered. I paused a moment to be thankful
+that the light in the outer office had been good!
+
+Beside the chair, in a waste-basket, was the heap of apple parings I
+had noticed. It needed only a glance to show me that they had curled
+and withered and turned dark since I saw them. Then they were freshly
+cut,--no question about that. The man who had sat there waiting and
+watching had been munching apples. And Eugene Benbow did not like
+apples!
+
+I carefully gathered up the parings and spread them out on the table.
+They showed two colors. Plainly he had sampled different varieties.
+Then I glanced at the basket of apples which still stood on the table.
+It was like the three in the other room. I picked up one of the
+apples--and whistled. Cut sharply into the tough skin was the imprint
+of teeth! The murderer would seem to have tested this apple by the
+primitive method of biting it; and he had not liked the flavor. I
+picked up another. The mark of teeth was on this also, and even
+plainer. It struck me that the mark showed irregularities that ought
+to help in identifying the owner. They were evidently crowded teeth,
+with no space between them, and on both sides the crowding had forced
+two of the teeth outward in a wedge. If a man could be identified by
+his finger print, why not by the print of his teeth? Especially when
+he had teeth so peculiar. I hastily locked the office, postponing
+further examination of the rooms until I should have had taken
+measures to preserve the records of the two bitten apples. I had an
+idea that my dentist could help me there. As I came out into the hall,
+I saw a man with gray hair and beard--a countryman, I gathered at
+first glance,--who stood looking at the door of the Western
+Improvement Company in a dazed kind of way. I passed him, and then
+hesitated, wondering if I should, in common humanity, speak to him. He
+looked bewildered or ill. But he paid no attention to me or my halt,
+and I walked on, thinking that he was probably merely one of the
+morbidly curious who are attracted to the scene of any crime. It
+seemed strange, afterwards, when I realized that I had had the chance
+offered me of getting into touch with the man who was going to be so
+important a link in my chain of evidence, and that I had almost lost
+the chance. But as it turned out, it was as well. But I must tell
+things in order.
+
+I found Dr. Kenton more than ready to be interested. He was an
+enthusiast in his profession, and though his dissertations on
+acclusial contacts and marsupial elevations (I know that's wrong, but
+it sounds like that)--though these things bored me when I wanted to
+make a sitting short, I was now glad to draw upon his professional
+interest.
+
+"I want you to look at the marks of teeth in these apples," I said.
+"Distinct, aren't they?"
+
+"Beautiful! Beautiful!" he murmured.
+
+"Can you make a wax model like that, so as to hold that record
+permanently?"
+
+"Certainly. Nothing easier."
+
+"Then I wish you would. Could you, perhaps, make a set of teeth that
+would fit those marks?"
+
+He examined the apples carefully, and nodded his head. "I can."
+
+"Then I commission you to do that also. Should you say there was
+anything peculiar about those teeth? Anything identifying?"
+
+"Yes. Certainly. The jaw is uncommonly narrow for an adult--"
+
+"But you are sure it is an adult?" I asked anxiously. The possibility
+that a child might have been sampling Barker's apples struck me for
+the first time. But Dr. Kenton reassured me.
+
+"It is an adult, is it not?"
+
+"I don't know who it is. What I want to do is to use this record to
+identify the man who bit these apples,--let's call him Adam for the
+present. I am hoping that his inherited taste for the fatal fruit may
+in time lead to his fall. In other words, Dr. Kenton, I am trying to
+identify a criminal of whom I have, at present, no information except
+that I believe him to be the man who put his teeth into these apples.
+If I find my suspicions focusing upon anyone in particular, I shall
+call upon you to examine his teeth. You understand, of course, that
+all this is in professional confidence and in the cause of justice."
+
+Dr. Kenton's eyes lighted up with a glow of triumph. He put out his
+hand.
+
+"Let me shake hands with you. That is an idea which I have been urging
+through the dental journals for years. The insurance companies should
+require dental identification in any case of uncertainty. There is no
+means of identification so absolutely certain."
+
+"I am glad to have you confirm my impression, Doctor. Now, you will
+have to take this impression before the fruit withers, and then I want
+you to come with me to the morgue and get an impression of the teeth
+of Alfred Barker, the man who was killed last night in the Ph[oe]nix
+Building."
+
+"Did he bite that?" Dr. Kenton asked, with a tone of awe.
+
+"I am sure he did _not_. I want to be able to prove he did not, if
+that claim should be made." And I explained to him enough of the
+situation to secure his sympathetic understanding.
+
+"I see. I see. Well, nothing will be easier to establish than whether
+he did or didn't. Whoever it was that left this record of an important
+part of his anatomy can be identified."
+
+"If we can first catch him," I said.
+
+"Surely. But it is an uncommon jaw,--narrow and prominent."
+
+"Then I shall want to have you see my client Eugene Benbow. It will
+not be necessary for you to do anything more than to look at him, will
+it?"
+
+"That will be enough. I can tell at a glance whether his jaw has this
+conformation. Or, find out who his dentist is, and I will get the
+information from him without his knowing it."
+
+"Good. Now when can you go with me to the morgue? The sooner the
+better."
+
+He made an appointment for later in the day, and I left him.
+
+I hurried back to my office, for there were a number of things I had
+to see to before going to keep my appointment with Dr. Kenton. While I
+was yet a block away, I saw a young girl running down the street
+toward me. It did not occur to me that she was coming for me until she
+came near enough for me to recognize Jean Benbow. Then I hastened to
+meet her.
+
+"What is it?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Come quick," she exclaimed--and even then I noticed that her swift
+run had not taken her breath away. "There's another one here to look
+after."
+
+I didn't understand what she meant, but I saw that I was needed
+somewhere and I broke into a run myself. She guided me to Barney's
+stand. Behind it, on the ground, lay a man, with a beautiful
+woman--Katherine Thurston it was--dabbling his head with a wet
+handkerchief while Barney poured something out of a bottle into a tin
+dipper. (Barney could be guaranteed to keep some of the joy of life
+with him under the most desolating of conditions.)
+
+"If you'll give him a sup of this, Mr. Hilton," he said
+confidentially, as I came up, "'tis all the poor cratur will need. A
+wooden leg is the divil for kneeling down, and I couldn't be asking a
+lady like that to handle the shtuff, ye understand."
+
+I took the dipper and knelt down beside the fallen man,--and at once I
+recognized him as the rustic whom I had seen, looking dazed and
+bewildered, outside of Barker's office a few hours before. He opened
+his eyes, looked about vacantly, and made a feeble effort to rise.
+
+"Drink this, and you will feel better," I said. (A sniff had convinced
+me that Barney's prescription wasn't half bad.) He drank it and
+coughed.
+
+"He's coming around all right," I said. "What happened? Faint?"
+
+Barney rubbed his chin dubiously. "I'm thinking he had his wits about
+him all right when he made out to faint jist at the time the ladies
+was coming by. If it wa'n't for the sinse he showed in that, I'd say
+he was a bit looney."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He came down the street like a drunk man, but he wasn't drunk,
+begging the ladies' pardon, I could see that with me eyes shut. When
+he came by my bit of a stand he took hould of it with both hands and
+leaned across to look at me like I was his ould brother. 'He's dead,'
+he says. 'Who's dead,' says I. 'He's dead,' says he again. 'He's
+escaped.' And with that he fell to the ground, and if the ladies
+hadn't come out that minute from yon door, and yourself came running,
+it's meself that would have had to go down on me wooden knee that
+don't bend, to lift his head off the stones."
+
+I spoke to the man, trying to learn his name and address. He was not
+unconscious but he seemed dazed or distrustful, and I could get
+nothing from him. By this time quite a group of people had gathered
+about us,--indeed, I wondered that they had not come before, but as a
+matter of fact the man had fallen only a few seconds before I came
+upon the scene. (Miss Thurston and Jean had been up to my office, it
+appeared, and had been coming away at that moment.)
+
+The few words that Barney repeated from the man's dazed remarks before
+he fell, and the fact that I had seen him in the Ph[oe]nix Building of
+course made me feel that I wanted to keep him under my own
+surveillance until I could find out what, if anything, he knew of
+Barker. I therefore hurried a boy off to call a carriage, and when it
+came I helped the old man in and drove to the St. James Hospital.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" I asked the attending physician--after I
+had got him installed.
+
+"Hard to tell yet. He fainted on the street, you say? He is obviously
+exhausted, but what the cause or the outcome may be, I can't tell you
+yet."
+
+"I want you to let me know the minute he is sufficiently restored to
+talk. And don't let anyone talk to him until I have seen him."
+
+The doctor raised his eyebrows. I handed him my card.
+
+"There is a possibility that he may know something about the Barker
+murder," I said.
+
+The doctor looked surprised. "Why, I thought the murderer had
+confessed. Is there anything further to investigate?"
+
+"We haven't all of the facts yet," I answered. "This man may know
+something, and again he may not. But don't let him talk to anyone
+until I have quizzed him. Will you see to that?"
+
+"Oh, all right," he said easily. "The old fellow isn't likely to be
+quite himself until he has slept the clock around, I judge. I'll
+telephone you when he is able to see visitors. What makes you think he
+knows anything about it?"
+
+"Oh, just a guess," I said.
+
+Really, come to look at it, I had very slight foundation for the
+feeling I had that something was going to come out of the old man's
+revelations; but that isn't the first or the last time that an
+unreasoning impulse has been of more value to me than all the learning
+of the schools.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+THE FRAT SUPPER
+
+
+In the meantime, there were two people I wanted to question,--Al
+Chapman, the fellow who had told Mr. Ellison about the Frat Supper,
+and Mr. Garney, his tutor. I found Al Chapman at the Fraternity House,
+where I had gone to make inquiries for him. He was a serious,
+studious-looking boy, and he came to meet me with his finger still
+marking a place in a copy of Cicero's De Senectute.
+
+"I am Mr. Hilton," I explained. "Mr. Ellison has asked me to act as
+Eugene Benbow's lawyer, and I wanted to ask you some questions about
+your birthday supper, you know."
+
+He nodded, solemnly. Evidently he felt it a funereal occasion.
+
+"I have no doubt that you can give me some useful information that
+will help to explain Benbow's actions," I said, as cheerfully as
+possible. "I wish you would tell me about the supper."
+
+"We didn't think it would end like this!" he said tragically.
+
+"It isn't ended yet. Perhaps you can help me make a good ending. Tell
+me what happened as far as you remember it."
+
+"Nothing happened out of the ordinary until we were smoking after the
+banquet was over. Then we got to telling weird stories--and someone
+told of a mountain feud, you know, and how they carried it on for
+years and years as long as anybody was left, and Gene said he didn't
+blame anyone for feeling that way, and we talked back and forth, you
+know, some saying one thing and some another, and then one of the new
+fellows, Gregory, sung out to Gene and asked him when he was going to
+settle things with the man that shot his father. Of course the other
+fellows tried to squelch him,--they all knew how Gene would feel about
+that,--and Gene, he got stiff, the way he does when he doesn't want to
+go to smash, and said he didn't know where the wretch was, and Grig,
+the fool, says, 'Why, he's here in town. I saw him on Main street the
+other day, and a man pointed him out as the man that killed Senator
+Benbow.' Then somebody threw a pillow at Grig, and somebody else gave
+him a kick, and the fellows all began to talk loud and fast at once,
+and things passed off. I saw Gene tried to stick it out, because he
+didn't want to break up the shindig, but after a little while he
+slipped out and I knew he had gone. I have wished a thousand times
+that I had gone with him, but just then I thought he would rather be
+alone. Besides, I wanted to stay and help finish Grig off."
+
+"Have you any idea how Benbow knew that Barker was in the Ph[oe]nix
+Building? Was that mentioned?"
+
+"No, I didn't notice that it was. But that's on Main street, you know,
+and Grig said Main street."
+
+"Yes, perhaps. Had Benbow been drinking,--enough to affect him?"
+
+Young Chapman looked somewhat embarrassed. "We don't--usually--"
+
+"But you did on this occasion?"
+
+"Well, it was a birthday, you see,--rather special. And we only had
+two bottles--"
+
+"Among how many?"
+
+"Twelve of us."
+
+"Well, if Benbow didn't have more than his share, that ought not to
+have knocked him senseless." I rose. I hadn't learned anything that
+Eugene had not already told me. Chapman rose, also, but looked anxious
+and unsatisfied.
+
+"We've been wondering, sir," he broke out desperately. "Will they--I
+mean, is it--will he--be hung?"
+
+(Isn't that like youth? Jumping to the end of the story, and
+considering life done at the first halt in the race!)
+
+"If he should be convicted of murder in the first degree, that is the
+penalty," I said. "But he hasn't been tried yet, much less convicted."
+
+"We didn't think on his birthday that he would go out like that," said
+Chapman, solemnly. "It's as Cicero says, even a young man cannot be
+sure on any day that he will live till nightfall."
+
+I glanced at the book in his hand. His classical quotation was
+obviously new!
+
+"Are you reading De Senectute?" I asked.
+
+"I'm doing it in Latin,--yes, sir. This is an English translation
+which Mr. Garney lent me today to show me what a poor rendering I had
+made. This is translated by Andrew Peabody, and he makes it sound like
+English! Gene was doing it with me. I don't suppose we will ever do
+any more Latin together."
+
+"Don't be too sure of that. You may both come to know more of Old Age,
+in Latin, in English, and in life, than you now guess. But I want to
+ask you another question. Do you know Benbow's associates or friends
+outside of the University?"
+
+"What sort of associates?" asked Chapman, looking puzzled.
+
+"Any sort,--good, bad or indifferent. Especially the bad and
+indifferent."
+
+The young fellow looked offended. "Gene doesn't have associates of
+that kind," he said, indignantly.
+
+"Nothing in his life to hide?"
+
+"No, _sir_. You wouldn't ask that if you knew him."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," I said absently. Of course I was glad to hear
+it, but it did not help out the half-theory I was considering that
+Benbow might somehow have been "in" with Barker's murderer, though not
+himself the active assailant, and have been forced, by fear or favor,
+to protect the criminal. But there was no use committing myself to any
+theory until I had more material to work with.
+
+"Will you come down to my office this afternoon and let me take your
+deposition about what happened at the birthday supper? I want to get
+that on record while it is clear in your memory. And will you bring
+two or three others,--fellows who were there and heard it all? If
+worst comes to worst, I want to be able to prove that he acted under
+the immediate impulse of passion aroused by what Gregory said."
+
+"Yes, I see. I'll bring all of them, if you like."
+
+"Bring as many as care to come. Be there by four, if you can," I said.
+That would give me time for my interview with Dr. Kenton.
+
+I am not going to take time here to recount the details of that
+interview. Suffice it to say that Dr. Kenton made an examination of
+Barker's teeth which established clearly that he was not the man who
+had bit the apples I had found in his inner office. He took a wax
+impression which would be enough to make this fact indisputable
+thereafter.
+
+While he was engaged in this task, I took occasion to ask the coroner
+about the articles which had been found in Barker's pockets. He was
+now willing to allow me to examine the little collection. In addition
+to the things which I had noticed in the evening, I now saw that there
+was a part of a worn time-table, and two empty envelopes with pencil
+figuring on the back. The small memorandum book which I had noticed
+before engaged my special attention. A number of the front pages had
+been torn out. On some of the other pages were pencil figurings which
+held no significance that I could see. On the last page was what
+appeared to be a summary. At any rate, I recognized in some of the
+figures the total of the scribbled sums in addition and subtraction on
+the inside pages. This list seemed to have some coherence, and as the
+coroner had doubts about the propriety of letting me have the book, I
+made a copy of it, as follows:
+
+     Deering            97.50
+     Junius             17.25
+     Dickinson          52.00
+     Hawthorne          69.75
+     Lyndale            35.00
+     Sweet Valley      217.25
+     Illington          40.00
+     Eden Valley        32.00   (+1000)
+     Dunstan            27.00
+
+
+I recognized the names as those of towns in the State, but that was
+not very illuminating. From the time-table, Barker had probably swung
+around this circle, and the figures might mean the amount he had made
+at each town. Or they might mean something entirely different. I
+needed more light before forming even a conjecture on the subject.
+
+As I was about to replace the memorandum book, I made a surprising
+discovery. Running my finger over the edges of the leaves to see
+whether any other pages were used, I discovered a folded piece of
+paper stuck between two of the leaves, which had evidently escaped the
+casual examination the book had previously received. I unfolded it. It
+was an uncashed check for $250, made payable to "bearer" and signed by
+Howard Ellison! The date was only three days old. All this I saw at a
+glance. I was about to replace the paper when the coroner, who had
+been examining the other articles, looked up and saw it. He took it
+from my hand and examined it in turn.
+
+"That's curious," was his comment. "Ellison is young Benbow's uncle,
+isn't he?"
+
+"Something of that sort."
+
+"He will be two hundred and fifty dollars ahead, since Barker didn't
+cash the check, eh?"
+
+"I suppose the check belongs to his estate, in any event."
+
+"If he has one. No one has claimed the body."
+
+"What will become of it, then?"
+
+"Oh, there was money enough in his pockets to pay for his burial. The
+authorities will see to it in any case."
+
+"By the way, if any relatives should turn up, I'd like to know. Do you
+know whether Barker was ever married?"
+
+"I have never heard. If he was, his wife will probably let us hear
+from her. This will be reported in all the papers everywhere."
+
+"True. There ought to be some news in a day or two, if she intends to
+come forward at all. I'll call your office up later."
+
+When Kenton was through with his piece of work, I took him with me to
+the jail, and while I talked to Eugene for a few minutes, Dr. Kenton
+stood by and took observations.
+
+When we were again outside he shook his head.
+
+"He's not the man. I don't need to examine his teeth. The shape of the
+jaw is sufficient. Whom else do you suspect?"
+
+"No one in particular. But if it wasn't Barker and wasn't Benbow, it
+was someone else. Who that someone is, I shall endeavor to find out."
+
+But though I spoke firmly, I had to acknowledge to myself that so far
+I had very little to go on. Doubtless he had many enemies, as Clyde
+had suggested, but they did not come forward. Neither did his friends,
+if he had any. He was an isolated man. And yet he held many strings
+connected with other lives. That check of Ellison's meant something.
+But Gene had confessed! I felt that my only hope lay in finding out
+who, in Eugene's circle of acquaintances, would have good reason to
+wish Barker removed, would be unscrupulous enough to kill him,--and
+sufficiently influential with Eugene to induce him to take another's
+crime upon himself.
+
+I gained little from the Frat boys, though I examined them all that
+afternoon, and had my clerk Fellows, who was a notary, take their
+formal depositions for future use if necessary. They all testified to
+the remarks made by Gregory and the disturbing effect which the
+incident had had upon Benbow, but when I tried to probe for outside
+entanglements, influences, or relations, I drew a blank every time. So
+far as his college mates knew, Gene Benbow was merely an exemplary
+student, more interested in his books than in athletics, but a "good
+fellow" for all that. It was evident that his shooting of Barker had
+filled them not only with surprise but with secret admiration. They
+hadn't expected it of him.
+
+"I'll go to Mrs. Whyte," I said to myself. "She's a woman and his next
+door neighbor. More, she is Mrs. Whyte. She will know, if anyone
+does."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+CHIEFLY GOSSIP
+
+
+I went accordingly to Mrs. Whyte's that very same evening. On the way
+I stopped at Mr. Ellison's to interview Minnie, the maid. I didn't
+expect any very important evidence from her, but as she was the only
+one who could have seen Benbow after he left the banquet, and would
+know whether or not he was alone, I wanted to hear what she had to
+say.
+
+She came into the library at Mr. Ellison's summons,--a very pretty
+girl, but also evidently a very timid girl. At each question I asked,
+she glanced mutely at Mr. Ellison, as if trying to read his wishes
+before venturing to answer. I guessed that Mr. Ellison might perhaps
+be somewhat severe with his servants, and that the timid Minnie would
+far rather lie than encounter his displeasure.
+
+"This is nothing to frighten you, Miss Doty," I said gently, trying to
+draw her eyes to me from Mr. Ellison,--and without complete success.
+"I am not a policeman. I just want to ask a few questions that will
+help me to understand things myself. You were the only person in the
+house last night, I believe. Is that so?"
+
+"Yes," she said, drawing a quick breath, and with a darting glance at
+Mr. Ellison.
+
+"Yes, Gene and I were both dining out," Mr. Ellison put in, "and Mrs.
+Crosswell, the housekeeper, is away for the week. So Minnie was left
+in charge of the house."
+
+"You weren't afraid?" I said smilingly, trying to ease her nervous
+tension. But the obtuse Ellison again took the word from her mouth.
+
+"Why should she be afraid? I told her to lock up the house and let no
+one in."
+
+"Can you hear the door-bell from your room?" I asked, remembering Jean
+Benbow's vain efforts to make herself heard at the front door. Minnie
+had evidently been gossiping in the neighborhood, instead of guarding
+the house!
+
+"Yes--not always," she stammered, nervously.
+
+"You didn't hear Miss Benbow ring."
+
+"Not at first," she said in a low voice. I guessed she was afraid of a
+scolding for being out of the house, and shaped my next question so as
+to spare her an explicit statement.
+
+"It was you who let Miss Benbow in, wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes," she murmured, hardly above a breath. Her eyes fell, and the
+color came and went in her face.
+
+"Did you leave the house at all after letting her in?"
+
+"No," she said quickly, lifting her eyes. I was sure she spoke the
+truth that time.
+
+"Then can you tell me when Mr. Benbow came in?"
+
+"No, sir. I--I don't know."
+
+"Could he get in without your knowing?"
+
+"He has a latch-key to the side door,--the library door," said Mr.
+Ellison. "He uses the library for his study."
+
+"Then you wouldn't know whether he came in at all last night?" I said
+to Minnie.
+
+"Oh, yes, he came in," she said quickly.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I--I saw him--go out," she stammered, with sudden confusion.
+
+"When?"
+
+"I--didn't notice."
+
+"But you saw him leave the house?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He came down--he went down the steps from the library, and
+went off."
+
+"Off to the street, you mean?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Did he speak to you?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir. He didn't see me."
+
+"Where were you?"
+
+She hesitated and stammered. "In the dining room." I felt sure that
+this time she was not telling the truth, but Mr. Ellison unconsciously
+came to her support.
+
+"There is a bay window in the dining room which overlooks the library
+entrance," he volunteered.
+
+"Was Mr. Benbow alone?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You are sure about that?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he was quite alone," she said positively.
+
+"You didn't see any stranger here during the evening, either with Mr.
+Benbow or otherwise?"
+
+"No, sir, there wasn't anybody here at all," she said with a
+definiteness that was convincing.
+
+I let her go at that,--to her evident relief. I had seen the
+trepidation of perfectly innocent witnesses too often to attach any
+great weight to her nervousness, but at the same time I had a feeling
+that she had not been perfectly frank. But probably the fact that she
+had been out of the house when she was supposed to be in it was enough
+to give her that atmosphere of something concealed.
+
+"That confirms Mr. Benbow's statement that he came home for his
+revolver," I said to Ellison, who, I was sure, had listened carefully,
+though he had made a show of indifference and inattention. "I thought
+possibly someone might have seen him and talked with him who could
+throw some light on the matter, but it seems not. How is Miss Benbow?"
+
+"Jean? Oh, she's all right. No business to be here, mixing up in
+things that concern men, but what can you expect nowadays? Of course
+she had to come interfering."
+
+"If you think she would care to see me,--"
+
+He shook his head impatiently. "Miss Thurston is with her. They are
+talking things over for all they are worth."
+
+I rose to depart. Then the thought which had been in the background of
+my mind all along came forward. After all, I might as well be the one
+to tell him.
+
+"Mr. Ellison, they found a check signed by you in Barker's pocket. You
+will probably hear of it, if you didn't already know."
+
+He puckered his eyelids and looked at me narrowly.
+
+"Where did you get that bit of information?"
+
+"I saw the check."
+
+"A check payable to Barker?"
+
+"No, it was made payable to bearer."
+
+"Indeed?" He laughed a little maliciously. "I wonder how Barker got
+hold of it!"
+
+"Barker had ways of getting money," I said drily. There was no reason
+why he should take me into his confidence, of course--and, judging
+from what I knew of Barker, probably there was every reason why he
+should not,--but his reserve was somewhat tantalizing! It would have
+been natural for him to mention the fact of his own acquaintance or
+business dealings with Barker when he first interviewed me,--unless
+they were of the nature that people don't discuss. Had Barker been
+levying blackmail on him also? In spite of his inscrutability, I was
+sure my information had disturbed him, though he was not surprised.
+Had he been nerving himself for the discovery? I reflected that ease,
+long continued, makes people soft. Mr. Ellison was probably less fit
+to meet trouble than Jean.
+
+I went down the street to the next house, where Mr. Whyte and my dear
+white-haired friend were sitting on the front porch, taking in the
+pleasant evening air. (It was early in October.) They appeared to have
+been sitting quiet in the sympathetic silence of the long married, but
+from the way in which Whyte wrung my hand I could see that the quiet
+covered a good deal of emotional strain.
+
+"What _can_ be done for the poor boy?" was Mrs. Whyte's first
+question.
+
+"I don't know yet. I am simply gathering the facts at present."
+
+"It's a terrible business," said Mr. Whyte. "Ellison tells me that he
+has asked you to defend Gene, but I don't see that the boy has left
+you much legal ammunition. He confesses the shooting."
+
+"The law will have to take cognizance of the facts attending the
+shooting,--his youth, the provocation, the circumstances. I don't
+despair. But I want to know everything possible,--his temperament, his
+associations, his friends. You can help me here, Mrs. Whyte."
+
+"How? Dear knows I'll be glad to."
+
+"Has he ever talked about avenging his father's death? Has that been
+on his mind?"
+
+"He never spoke of it. I don't believe it was on his mind. You see, he
+was only ten years old at the time, and though it must, of course,
+have been a great shock, he was really nothing but a child, and a
+child soon forgets. Senator Benbow's death killed his wife, but I
+don't think Gene realizes that. Mr. Ellison took Eugene to live with
+him and put Jean into a good boarding-school, and they both have been
+happy enough. Eugene has grown up just like other boys, except that he
+has been more alone. I have made a point of having him over here a
+good deal, just because he was growing up with no women about, over at
+Mr. Ellison's. Of course his sister has been here a good deal,
+holidays and so on, but that's different."
+
+"Did he go anywhere else, so far as you know?"
+
+"I know that he did not. He is too shy and reserved to care much for
+society. He loves to read and dream, and aside from his college mates,
+I don't believe that he has any friends that you could call intimate.
+In fact, I can't flatter myself that he really cared to come over here
+to see me, except when Katherine Thurston was here visiting me."
+
+"He had the good taste then to admire Miss Thurston?"
+
+Mr. Whyte chuckled across the gloom. "He has been her devoted slave
+for a year past."
+
+"Now, Carroll," Mrs. Whyte began in protest, but before she could give
+it further expression we were interrupted by an approaching visitor.
+Clyde came swinging up the walk with an eager stride.
+
+"Good evening!" he called cheerily, lifting his hat. "What a perfect
+evening it is! I don't wonder you are all out of doors. Evening,
+Hilton." His vigorous, even happy, manner, was most alien to our mood.
+It struck us like laughter at a funeral.
+
+"We were just speaking of poor Gene Benbow," said Mrs. Whyte, with
+delicate reproof in her voice.
+
+"Oh, yes, of course. He was a friend of yours, wasn't he?" he said,
+toning his manner down to a different key from that in which he had
+come.
+
+"Was and is," said Whyte simply.
+
+"Yes, of course," said Clyde, hastily, trying to right himself with
+the current. "Poor fellow, as you say. He must have brooded over his
+father's death a great deal to have such a purpose develop in his
+mind. But Barker richly deserved his fate, for that matter."
+
+"Oh, I'm not wasting any sympathy on Barker," said Mrs. Whyte, and
+something in her crisp tones told me that Clyde was not wholly
+_persona grata_ with the warm-hearted lady. "It's Gene I'm thinking
+about."
+
+"Of course. Naturally," he said, quickly. Then, as the pause was
+beginning to be awkward, he asked tentatively, "I wonder if I might
+see Miss Thurston."
+
+"She isn't at home," said Mrs. Whyte (and I was sure from her voice
+that she found a certain satisfaction in denying his request). "She
+has gone to spend the night with Jean."
+
+"With whom?" he asked sharply.
+
+"With Jean Benbow,--Eugene's sister, you know. She is here at Mr.
+Ellison's,--came up home last night to celebrate their birthday, poor
+child."
+
+"This thing has been an awful blow to Katherine," said Mr. Whyte,
+taking his cigar from his mouth, and dropping his voice. "I didn't
+know she had it in her to feel so deeply for a friend's trouble. She
+is always so self-possessed and calm that I suppose I thought she had
+no feelings. But, by Jove, she was crushed. I never saw anyone look so
+overwhelmed with grief. She couldn't have felt it more if she had been
+Eugene's mother."
+
+"Heavens, Carroll, Katherine isn't as old as _that!_" said Mrs. Whyte
+impatiently.
+
+"Well, then, his sweetheart!" said Whyte, half-laughing. "I won't say
+as his sister. His sister was twice as plucky and sensible about it as
+Katherine was, for that matter. _She_ didn't go all to pieces."
+
+"Miss Thurston is very sympathetic," said Clyde, in a tone which did
+not wholly match his words. He rose and stood for a moment,
+hesitating, as though he had not yet said what he came to say.
+
+"They have been to see me again to-day about running for mayor on the
+citizens' ticket," he said at last, half-deprecatingly. "I--I almost
+think I will let them put my name up." (He glanced at me with a smile
+as he spoke, knowing that I would understand his new attitude in the
+matter.) "That is,--unless my friends dissuade me."
+
+"Good enough!" cried Whyte. "Go ahead! We'll work for you to a man."
+
+"I wondered what you and Mrs. Whyte would say about it,--and Miss
+Thurston," he added, haltingly.
+
+"I can tell you that," said Mrs. Whyte, in her most decisive tones.
+"Katherine won't care a pin who is mayor of Saintsbury until she knows
+what is to come to Gene Benbow."
+
+"Yes, of course," said Clyde, uncomfortably. "I'm awfully sorry about
+all this distress. If there is anything at all that I can do,--"
+
+"Thank you," said Mrs. Whyte, somewhat loftily. "I'll tell Katherine."
+
+And Clyde departed, knowing that in this quarter at least he was not
+quite forgiven for being alive and free and ambitious while Gene
+Benbow was lying in prison. I think that I, though his newest friend,
+was the one most sympathetic toward him that evening. I could
+understand how the relief, the new feeling of security, which had
+followed Barker's death, had made the whole world seem new-made for
+him. Besides, he had no such feeling of personal friendship for Gene
+as the rest of the group had.
+
+"I'll tell Katherine all right," said Mrs. Whyte, somewhat
+maliciously, I thought. "Oh, yes, I'll tell Katherine that he came
+around to talk about the political situation, this evening of all
+times."
+
+"Now, Clara," said her husband pacifically. "The nomination is an
+important matter, and we can't stop living just because Gene Benbow is
+in trouble."
+
+"He has never liked Gene," said Mrs. Whyte, defensively. "Whenever he
+finds Gene here with Katherine, or finds that he has taken her out
+walking, or anything like that, he just stands and glowers."
+
+"Perhaps he is jealous," said Whyte, with a subdued chuckle.
+
+"He has no right to be jealous. If Katherine enjoys Gene's society,
+she has a perfect right to choose it. Not that there is anything of
+_that_ sort between them! Katherine is not old enough to be Gene's
+mother, but she is older, and she would never allow anything of that
+sort to happen. Besides, if she had wanted Kenneth Clyde, she could
+have had him years ago."
+
+"I wonder why she has never married," said Whyte, blowing smoke rings
+into the air.
+
+"Too much sense," said Mrs. Whyte crisply. Then, quite obviously
+recollecting that this was not the view to present to me, she added,
+significantly, "When Mr. Right comes, it will be a different matter."
+
+"She wouldn't have a word to throw to the rightest Mr. Right in the
+world just now," said Mr. Whyte. "She is taking Gene's trouble pretty
+hard. But that little Jean is a wonder! She will be a heart-wrecker
+all right."
+
+"Now, Carroll, don't put any such ideas into her head. She is a mere
+child."
+
+"She is Gene's twin," said Mr. Whyte, shrewdly. "If his devotion to
+Katherine is to be treated respectfully, you can't act as though Jean
+were just out of the kindergarten. I'll bet she has had a broader
+experience with love-affairs than Katherine has."
+
+"You don't know anything about it," was Mrs. Whyte's crushing
+response, and after that the conversation became more general.
+
+I had listened with the greatest interest, not only because of the
+light which the conversation threw on the character of the boy whom I
+wished to understand, but because of the vivid interest in Jean Benbow
+which my brief encounter with her had aroused. She was, as Mrs. Whyte
+said, merely a child, and even youthful for her years, but a sure
+instinct told me that she would be past mistress of the game where
+hearts are trumps. I was soon to prove this surmise correct! Young
+Garney, Gene's Latin tutor, fell a victim at sight. By chance (if
+there be chance, which I sometimes doubt,) that affair began in my own
+office--and ended where none of us would have guessed. I had asked
+Garney to come to my office, to see if he could tell me anything
+helpful about Gene, when Jean stumbled in,--or ricochetted in, rather.
+Jean never did anything that suggested stumbling. But that interview
+was too important to be dismissed in a few words. I shall have to tell
+it in detail, later on. But before I come to that, there was a strange
+event which I must record. It befell that same evening, after I left
+the Whytes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+SOME OF JEAN'S WAYS
+
+
+I have noticed that ideas usually come to me at the moment of awaking.
+The next morning I came back to a consciousness of Gene Benbow's
+affairs with a perplexity which was momentarily illuminated by the
+thought, "Why don't I look up Barker's home? He must have been staying
+somewhere, and the people there may know something about him."
+
+Why hadn't I thought of that before? However, yesterday had been a
+pretty busy day as it was. I turned at once to the city directory, and
+then to the telephone directory. There was no indication in either
+that such a person as Alfred Barker lived in Saintsbury. The Western
+Land and Improvement Co. appeared in the telephone directory, but that
+of course was no help. I called up the police department and asked if
+they could tell me where Barker had lived. Yes, they had
+investigated,--26 Angus Avenue, was the number.
+
+"And, by the way," my informant added, "Barker's body has been
+claimed."
+
+"By whom?" I demanded.
+
+"Collier, the undertaker. He says that a woman came to his place last
+night and gave him directions and money, but would not give her name.
+She was veiled, and he knows nothing about her, except that she paid
+him to see that the body was decently interred."
+
+"That's all you know?"
+
+"That's all anybody knows."
+
+"Collier is in charge, then?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+That was interesting, so far as it went. Was the woman who had
+provided for Barker's burial merely some benevolent stranger who had
+been emotionally stirred by the newspaper accounts, (that sort of
+thing happens more frequently than you would believe,) or was there
+some closer bond? The answer seemed as hidden as everything else
+connected with this strange affair.
+
+On my way to my office, I hunted up 26 Angus Avenue. It was such a
+place as I might have expected,--a shabby house in a row, on a
+semi-obscure street. My ring was answered by a young woman of about
+twenty,--an unkempt, heavy-eyed young woman, who didn't look happy.
+She listened unresponsively while I preferred my request for some
+information about Mr. Barker, and left me standing in the hall while
+she returned to some dark back room. I heard her say, "Ma! Here's
+another wants to know things." And presently Ma appeared, hot from the
+kitchen, and somewhat fretted.
+
+"I can't be answering questions all day," she said, at me rather than
+to me. "There was a string of people here all day yesterday, taking my
+time. Just because Mr. Barker roomed here is no reason why I should
+know all about him."
+
+"You probably know more than any of the rest of us," I said,
+deferentially. "Had Mr. Barker been long with you?"
+
+"Long enough, but that don't mean that I know much about him. He was
+here awhile in the summer two years ago, and when he was in town
+afterwards he would come here to see if I could give him a room. But
+he never stayed long at a time. I think he was some kind of a
+traveling man,--here to-day and gone to-morrow. He has been here now
+for the last six weeks, but he never had any visitors or received any
+letters and I don't know the names and addresses of any of his
+relatives,--and that's what I told the police and all the rest of
+them!" She finished breathless but still defiant.
+
+"That seems to cover the ground pretty thoroughly," I laughed. "But I
+shall have to ask another question on my own account. Was he married?"
+
+"No!" said the girl positively. I had not noticed that she had
+returned. She was standing in the doorway behind me.
+
+"Not that we know," said the mother, more guardedly, and with an
+anxious look at her daughter.
+
+"Did he leave any effects here?"
+
+"You can see the room, like all the rest," she said, with grim
+impartiality.
+
+"I'd like to."
+
+She led the way up a narrow stairway from the front hall to a rear
+room on the second floor. She opened the door with a key which she
+took from her pocket, and stepped inside.
+
+"Land sakes!" she exclaimed.
+
+The reason was clear. The room was all upset. The contents of a trunk,
+which stood in one corner, were scattered upon the floor, the drawers
+of the bureau were open, and a writing desk near the window had
+evidently been thoroughly searched. Every drawer was open, and papers
+were scattered upon the floor.
+
+"Land sakes!" she repeated. "Gertie, come here."
+
+Gertie came, and swept the room with the unsurprised and comprehending
+eye of the practical young woman of to-day.
+
+"Someone got in through the window," she said briefly. "You know that
+clasp doesn't catch, Anybody could get in. Well, I hope they are
+satisfied now!" From her tone I understood that she hoped just the
+opposite.
+
+"We might all have been murdered in our beds!" exclaimed the mother.
+
+"Oh, it wasn't us they were after," said Gertie carelessly. "It was
+him! I tell you,--" She stopped suddenly and bit her lip.
+
+"But who could ever have known that the catch didn't work?" demanded
+the mother in a baffled manner.
+
+"To whom did you show the room yesterday?" I asked. "Anyone who had an
+opportunity to examine the room inside could have made plans for
+returning at night."
+
+"Well, first it was the police, and they told me not to let anyone
+touch anything,--though I knew that myself. Then there were people all
+day long,--curiosity seekers, I call them. There was one little old
+gentleman that came up first,--I say old, but he was as spry as any of
+them. Something like a bird in the way he turned his head."
+
+It suggested Mr. Ellison exactly! "With spectacles?" I asked.
+
+"Yes. Gold-brimmed. Gray hair that curled up at the ends."
+
+"Anyone else you remember? Was there a tall young man, fresh-shaven,
+with rather a blue-black tint where the beard had been taken off?"
+
+"There was!" cried Gertie. "I saw that! He came last night, about
+seven."
+
+"Well, I didn't let him go up," said the mother. "I was tired
+bothering with them."
+
+"But you told him which room Mr. Barker had," said Gertie.
+
+"Who was he?"
+
+"I don't know. I saw such a looking man with Mr. Barker the other day,
+and I just asked out of curiosity."
+
+"I will have to report this to the police," said the woman wearily.
+"No end of trouble. If you please, sir, I'll lock the door now."
+
+"One moment!" I had been standing beside the writing desk, and my eye
+had caught a few words written on a sheet of letter paper,--the
+beginning of an unfinished letter. "Is this Mr. Barker's writing, do
+you know?"
+
+The letter read:
+
+
+"My Dear Wife:--So I have found my little runaway! Did she think that
+she could hide away from her hubby? Don't fool yourself, little one!"
+
+
+Gertie had snatched the paper from my hand and read it with startled
+eyes. "I don't believe it," she said, violently. "That--is not his
+writing!" She flung the paper down, and left the room.
+
+"What is it?" asked her mother, fretfully.
+
+"An unfinished letter to his wife,--if it is his."
+
+"We never knew much about him," she said, looking troubled. I could
+easily guess a part of the story that troubled her.
+
+I had no excuse for further lingering, so I left Mrs. Barrows (she
+asked my name and gave me her own at parting) and went down to my
+office. Fellows was waiting for me, and it struck me at once that his
+manner was weighted with unusual significance.
+
+"Well?" I asked. He always waited, like a dog, for a sign.
+
+"Barker was married," he said. "He married a Mary Doherty up in
+Claremont four years ago, when he was forty. She was twenty."
+
+"Is that all you have found out?"
+
+"All so far."
+
+"That's good, so far as it goes, but I can add to it. She ran away
+from him, is probably now in Saintsbury, and the chances are that it
+was she who empowered Collier the undertaker to arrange for his
+burial. Advertise in the papers for Mary Doherty, and say that she
+will learn of something to her advantage by communicating with me.
+I'll make it to her advantage! Keep the advertisement going until I
+tell you to stop. That's all."
+
+Fellows went off and I knew the matter would be attended to faithfully
+and with intelligence. But several times during the day I noticed that
+he was unlike himself. He was absent-minded and he looked unmistakably
+worried. It frets me to have people about me who are obviously
+burdened with secret sorrows they will ne'er impart, and I finally
+spoke.
+
+"What in thunder is the matter with you today, Fellows? What's on your
+mind?"
+
+"Nothing," he said quickly. But after a minute or so he looked up with
+that same disturbed air. "Who would have thought that he had a wife?"
+
+"That's not especially astonishing."
+
+"I never thought that there could be a woman--a woman who could care
+for him, I mean."
+
+"She probably didn't. She ran away."
+
+"Still it must have been a terrible shock. And if she cared about
+burying him,--"
+
+"You're too tender-hearted, Fellows," I said. But I confess that I
+liked his betrayal of sympathy. He was too unemotional as a rule.
+
+Well, that brings me down to my interview with Garney, which took
+place that afternoon.
+
+Mr. Garney was one of the regular faculty at Vandeventer College, and
+to meet his convenience I asked him to fix the time and place for the
+interview which I desired. He said he would come to my office at four,
+and he kept his appointment promptly. I had told Jean Benbow that if
+she could come to my office at half past four, I would take her down
+to see her brother. She came fifteen minutes ahead of time,--and
+that's how she came into the story. Into that part of the story, I
+mean. But I had all that Garney could probably tell me before she came
+in and disconcerted him. I think my first question surprised him.
+
+"Mr. Garney, do you know anything to Eugene Benbow's discredit?"
+
+He looked at me with an intentness that I found was habitual with him,
+as though he weighed my words before he answered them.
+
+"You don't mean trivial faults?"
+
+"No. I mean anything serious."
+
+He shook his head. "No. He is an exceptionally fine fellow in every
+way. High-spirited and honorable. I suppose his sensitiveness to his
+family honor, as he conceives it, may be called a fault, since it has
+unbalanced him to the extent of leading him into a crime."
+
+"You know of no absorbing entanglement, either with man or woman?"
+
+"No," he said, evidently puzzled by my question.
+
+"Have you ever heard him express vengefulness toward Barker?"
+
+"Oh, yes," he said, decidedly. "I know that he has brooded over that.
+He does not talk of it in general, I believe, but he has been a
+special pupil of mine, and he has taken me somewhat into his
+confidence. That Barker should have escaped all punishment for the
+slaying of his father has worn upon him. He spoke of it only once, but
+then he expressed himself in such a way that I knew he had been
+carrying it in his mind a long time."
+
+"Then you believe that he really shot Barker?"
+
+He stared at me, amazed. "Of course."
+
+"You think of nothing that would prompt him to assert his guilt, if,
+in point of fact, he should not be guilty?"
+
+I never saw a man look more astonished. "If you really mean that, I
+can only say that I can think of nothing short of insanity which would
+make him say he shot Barker if he didn't. Why, he has confessed. Do
+you mean to say that you think the confession false? And if so, why?"
+
+"I am not thinking yet. I am merely gathering facts of all sorts. When
+I get them all together, I expect to discover the truth, whatever it
+may be."
+
+"I supposed his confession was conclusive. But I suppose you lawyers
+get to looking at everything with suspicion. Have you anything to
+support your extraordinary hypothesis beyond your natural desire to
+clear your client?"
+
+I had no intention of taking him extensively into my confidence, but I
+was saved the necessity of answering at all by the opening of my
+office door. Jean Benbow put her head in, with a shy, childlike
+dignity.
+
+"Am I too early?" she whispered. "I couldn't wait."
+
+"Come in," I smiled.
+
+She came in, glanced carelessly at my visitor, and walked over to my
+window. She was dressed in an autumnal brown, with a trim little hat
+that somehow made her look more mature and less childish than she had
+seemed before, though still more like a frank brown-faced boy than a
+young lady. I saw that Carney's eyes followed her to the window with a
+look of startled attention.
+
+"I think that is all I wanted to ask you at this time," I said,
+meaning to imply that the interview was ended.
+
+"Yes," he said, irrelevantly, without taking his eyes from Jean.
+
+I rose. "I may come to you again, Mr. Garney,--"
+
+At the name, Jean turned swiftly and came to us.
+
+"Oh, are you Mr. Garney?" she asked eagerly, putting out her hand.
+"I'm so glad to meet you. Gene has told me about you. I'm Gene's twin
+sister, Jean."
+
+He looked like a man in a dream, and I could see that his voice had
+caught in his throat. He took her hand and held it, looking down at
+her.
+
+"I didn't know that Gene had a sister," he said at last.
+
+"If that isn't like a boy!" she said with quick indignation. "At any
+rate, he has told me about you!"
+
+"Nothing bad, I hope?" He smiled faintly, but I felt that he was
+almost breathlessly waiting for her reassurance.
+
+"Mercy, no! He thinks you know an awful lot." Then she drew back a
+step, threw up her head to look him steadily in the eye, and said
+clearly, "Mr. Garney, I think Gene did exactly right. And I am proud
+of him."
+
+I saw that she meant to permit no misunderstanding as to her position
+but I doubted whether Garney cared a rap what she might think. It
+wasn't her opinions that he cared about. It was herself. I admit that
+it annoyed me. I wanted to get her out of his sight.
+
+"It is time for us to go, Miss Benbow," I said abruptly.
+
+"You are going down to the jail?" asked Garney quickly. I saw that it
+was on the tip of his tongue to propose going with us.
+
+"Yes, we are going," I said, looking at him steadily. "You, I believe,
+are going back to your classroom."
+
+An angry look came over his face as he caught my meaning. I saw that
+he would not forget it, but I didn't care. Was I to stand by and say
+nothing while he tumbled his wits at her feet? It was absurd. She
+wasn't old enough to understand and defend herself. We parted
+definitely at the street door, and I walked Jean so fast down the
+block that I was ashamed when I suddenly realized what I was doing.
+
+"I beg your pardon," I said, slowing up.
+
+She had kept up manfully, though breathlessly. "Oh, I like to walk
+fast," she said staunchly.
+
+"Did you see your brother yesterday?"
+
+"Yes. But only for a minute. And there was a horrid man who kept
+hanging around in a most ill-bred manner, so that I really couldn't
+talk to Gene comfortably. I believe he did it on purpose!"
+
+"It is quite possible," I admitted.
+
+She looked at me sideways under her long lashes. "Your voice sounds as
+though you were laughing at me inside."
+
+"Let me laugh with you, instead," I said hastily. "The man was there
+on purpose. Prisoners are not allowed to see visitors alone, speaking
+generally."
+
+She was thoughtful for a few moments. "Then how are we going to
+arrange to get him out?"
+
+"I thought you were going to leave that to me."
+
+"Not _leave_ it to you," she said gently. "Of course I am glad to have
+you help, because there are lots of times when a man is very useful.
+But Gene is _my_ brother, you know."
+
+"Yes, of course," I said, trying to catch her thought.
+
+"So of course I am going to be in it. All the time."
+
+"In what, child?"
+
+"In the plans for his escape." She set her face into lines of
+determination which I saw was intended to overwhelm any vain
+opposition that I might raise to her plan.
+
+"A lawyer doesn't usually take that method of getting a man out of
+prison," I said apologetically. "I hadn't thought of it."
+
+"But isn't it the best way?" she said urgently. "Of course I don't
+know as much about the law as you do,--of _course_ not,--but doesn't
+the law just _have_ to do something to a man when he shoots another
+man,--even if he is perfectly right to do it?"
+
+It was an appalling question. I could not answer. She did not need
+anything more than my face, apparently, for she went on quickly.
+
+"So that's why I thought it would be quicker and better, and would
+settle things once for all and be done with it," she explained. "Now,
+there are lots of ways we can help him to escape. You know we are
+twins."
+
+"Yes. What of that?"
+
+She hesitated a moment. "Isn't there any way I could get into Gene's
+room for a minute without having that horrid man watching?"
+
+"Perhaps. What then?"
+
+"We could change clothes. I'd wear a rain coat that came down to the
+ground and a wide hat with a heavy veil, and extra high heels on my
+shoes. And you'd be there to distract the attention of the horrid
+man,--_that_ would be your part, and it's a very difficult and
+important part, too. Then Gene would just walk down the corridor,--I'd
+have to remind him to take little steps and not to hurry too
+much,--and then after awhile they would come and look into the cell to
+see if he was all safe and they'd see me. And I'd just say 'Good day'
+politely, and walk off." She looked at me eagerly, waiting for my
+criticism.
+
+I looked as sympathetic as possible. "It's a very pretty plan, Miss
+Jean, but your brother is quite a bit taller than you are, isn't he?
+I'm afraid that might be noticed."
+
+She looked crestfallen, but only for a moment. "Then I don't see but
+what we shall have to get him out through the window," she said.
+
+"I have read of such things," I granted her.
+
+"Oh, yes, I have read quantities of stories where prisoners were
+helped to escape," she said eagerly. "It always can be done,--one way
+if not another. Last night I was trying to think it out, and I had six
+plans all thought out. What's the use of being twins, if it doesn't
+count for something?"
+
+"I am sure it counts for a great deal, Miss Jean, even if--"
+
+"But I _shall_ be able to," she cried, cutting across my unspoken
+words. "I must. Of course when I am talking to Gene I am as cheerful
+as possible, and I don't let him see that I--I'm a _bit_ afraid, but
+truly, you know, I--I--I don't like it." Her lips were quivering.
+
+"Dear child! Now, listen to me. We'll make an agreement. Let me have
+the first shot in this business. If we can get him out through the
+front door, with everybody cheering and shaking his hands, that will
+be better than an escape through the window, and living in hiding
+and in fear the rest of his life, won't it? But if that doesn't
+work,--if I see surely that the only way to save him from the
+vengeance of the law is to steal him away,--then I am with you, to the
+bitter end. I'll meet you with disguise, rope ladder, anything you can
+think of. But let me have my chance first, in my own way. Agreed?"
+
+She stopped in the street to put out her hand and shake mine firmly.
+Her eyes were as bright and steady as pilot lights.
+
+"I think you are perfectly splendid," she said with conviction. I have
+forgotten some important things in my life and I expect to forget a
+good many more, but I shall never forget the thrill that came to me
+with that absurd, girlish endorsement! I think it was the way she said
+it that made it seem so much like a gold medal pinned upon my breast.
+
+"I shall arrange for you to have a quiet talk with your brother, and
+then I'll leave you for a while. You will probably be watched, but I
+think you can speak without being overheard. I want you to remember
+carefully what your brother says."
+
+"And tell you?" she asked doubtfully, leaping ahead of my words, as I
+found she had a way of doing.
+
+"If he asks you to send a message to anyone, or asks about anyone in
+particular, I want to know it. Your brother is keeping something from
+me, Miss Jean, and I must find out what it is, in order to do him
+justice. I think there is someone else involved in this affair, and
+that he is keeping silence to his own hurt. Just remember that
+this is what I must find out about, somehow, and if he says
+anything--_anything_--that would show who is in his mind, that you
+must tell me."
+
+"I understand," she said, wide-eyed. "But whom could he care for so
+much as that?"
+
+"You can't help me by a guess?"
+
+"No. I'm afraid not. Gene writes beautiful letters when he wants to,
+but not like girls' letters, you know. Not about every little thing."
+
+We found Gene, as I had found him before, the polite, nice-mannered
+boy, evidently trying somewhat anxiously to deport himself as a
+gentleman should under unrehearsed conditions.
+
+"I have brought your sister for a little visit," I said. "I am coming
+for her after a little. I have arranged that you shall not be
+disturbed, so you may talk to her freely and without hesitation."
+
+"Oh, thank you! I hope I am not putting you to any trouble. I'm so
+sorry, Jean, that you should have to come here to see me. It isn't at
+all the right place for a girl." He looked as apologetic and disturbed
+as though he had brought her there inadvertently.
+
+I left them together for half an hour and then went back for Jean.
+Eugene detained me for a moment after Jean had said her last cooing
+goodbye.
+
+"I wish you would tell her not to come here," he said anxiously. "It
+won't look well. I can stand it alone all right. Honest, I can."
+
+I couldn't help liking the boy, though his anxiety to save his sister
+from unpleasant comment was somewhat inconsistent with his action in
+bringing this greater anxiety to her.
+
+"I don't believe I could keep her away," I said. "You will have to
+stand that as a part--of it all."
+
+He flushed in instant comprehension. I should have been ashamed of
+prodding him, if I hadn't felt that it was necessary to make him as
+uncomfortable as possible in order to get him out of his heroics and
+make him confess more ingenuously than he had done up to this time.
+
+I joined Jean, and walked to the car with her. "Well?" I asked.
+
+"He didn't say anything," she answered gravely. "Of course I told him
+that I thought he had done exactly right, and that I was proud of him,
+and that you were going to take care of all the law business and make
+it all right, and he wasn't to worry and I would come and see him. Of
+_course_ I am not going back to school."
+
+"You will live with your uncle, Mr. Ellison?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm afraid it will be a lonely and trying time for you. I wish I
+might do something to make things easier for you. Will you let me know
+if there ever is anything I can do?"
+
+"You can come and tell me how things are going," she said wistfully.
+"I don't understand about law, you know, and--it's lonesome waiting.
+If I could _do_ something,--"
+
+"You promised to leave that to me, you know," I said, anxious to keep
+her from forgetting what an important person I was in this affair!
+
+She did not answer for a moment, and then she looked up with a brave
+assumption of cheer.
+
+"I'd be ashamed to get blue when Gene is so plucky. He doesn't think
+about himself at all. He is only worried to death for fear Miss
+Thurston should be disturbed."
+
+"Is he great friends with Miss Thurston?"
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed. He asked about her first of all, and over and over
+again. He wanted me to be sure and go and see her at once, and tell
+her that he is all right."
+
+"Shall I put you on the car here, then? I am going down to St. James'
+Hospital to see our man."
+
+"Oh, mayn't I go with you?" she cried eagerly. "You know I have a
+share in him, too."
+
+"Of course you have,--a very large share. Yes, come on. We'll see what
+he has to say for himself."
+
+As it turned out, he had more to say for us than for himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+A GLEAM OF LIGHT
+
+
+The white-capped attendant at the hospital led us up a flight of
+broad, easy steps, to a large sunny room where convalescents were
+allowed to try their new strength. Here "our man" was sitting in a
+large arm-chair, wrapped in a blanket.
+
+"He simply wouldn't stay in bed," the nurse explained in an undertone.
+"He says he must go home, but he really isn't strong enough to walk
+across the room without help."
+
+"Is there anything the matter with him? Beyond exhaustion, I mean," I
+asked. Jean had run across the room and was bending over the old man
+with a coaxing concern in her face that was charming. She was like an
+elfin sprite trying to express sympathy for some poor, huddled-up
+toad.
+
+"That's enough," said the nurse crisply. "No, there doesn't seem to be
+anything else wrong. But it will take a week at least before he is
+able to take care of himself. His mind will grow stronger as he does."
+"Isn't his mind right?"
+
+"You can talk to him," she said, non-committally. "Don't tire him."
+And with that she left us.
+
+Jean came running back to meet me and put me properly into touch with
+things.
+
+"He isn't happy," she explained hastily. "You must be cheerful, and
+not bother him.--Here is Mr. Hilton who has come to see you, Mr.
+Jordan. Now you can have a nice little talk with _him_." Her tone
+indicated that this was indeed a privilege which might make up for
+many slings from unkind fortune.
+
+Mr. Jordan made an impatient gesture as though he would throw off the
+blanket which was binding his arms.
+
+"What am I doing here?" he asked querulously. "I want to get away. How
+did I get here?"
+
+"You fainted away on the street, Mr. Jordan," I answered. "We brought
+you here to have you taken care of. Of course you may go as soon as
+you are able to. Do you want to go home? Wouldn't it be best for some
+member of your family or some friend to come for you?"
+
+[Illustration: "_He was Diavolo's partner," he said vehemently_. Page
+137.]
+
+He let his chin sink upon his breast, and closed his eyes. Jean
+telegraphed me a look of comment, interpretation and exhortation. I
+half guessed what she meant, but I was too keen on my own trail to
+consider making things easy for the old man.
+
+"I believe you came to Saintsbury to look up Alfred Barker," I said,
+quietly.
+
+He did not answer or open his eyes, but I felt that his silence was
+now alert instead of dormant, and presently a slow shiver ran over his
+frame.
+
+"It was a shock to you to find that he was dead, was it not?"
+
+He roused himself to look at me. "I can't get at Diavolo except
+through him. He was Diavolo's partner," he said vehemently.
+
+"I am quite ready to believe that," I said heartily. But Jean had the
+good sense not to be frivolous. She was smoothing the old man's hand
+softly.
+
+"Who is Diavolo?" she asked simply.
+
+"If I knew! He was careful enough not to give his name." He was
+trembling with excitement and his voice broke in his throat.
+
+I began to see that this was a story which I must get, and also that I
+should have to get it piecemeal from his distracted mind.
+
+"Where did you meet Diavolo?" I asked.
+
+"Why, at Eden Valley."
+
+The name struck an echo in my brain. Of what was Eden Valley
+reminiscent?
+
+"What was he doing there?" I asked, questioning at hazard.
+
+The old man clutched the arms of his chair with his hands and leaned
+forward to look into my face. "You never heard of him?"
+
+"Not a word."
+
+He nodded heavily and sank back in his chair. "He gave a show," he
+said dully. "In the Opery House. To show off how he could hypnotize
+people." A slow tear gathered in his eye.
+
+I began to get a coherent idea. "Oh, Diavolo was the name assumed for
+show purposes by a man who went around giving exhibitions of
+hypnotism. Is that it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did Alfred Barker have to do with it?"
+
+"He was with him. He was the man that engaged the Opery House and done
+the rest of the business. Diavolo kep' in the background. Nobody knows
+who Diavolo was, but Alfred Barker left a trail I could follow."
+Excitement had made his voice almost strong, and brought back a
+momentary energy.
+
+"What did you want to follow him for?"
+
+His face worked with passion. "To get back my thousand!" he cried,
+clenching his trembling hands.
+
+"How did he get your thousand?"
+
+"He got it from the bank, on a check he made me sign while I was
+hypnotized!"
+
+Suddenly I remembered,--Eden Valley, 32.00 plus 1000. That was a part
+of the memoranda in Barker's note-book. A memorandum of the profits of
+their trip! But I must understand it better.
+
+"Did you let Diavolo hypnotize you?" I asked.
+
+"I didn't think he could," the old farmer admitted, hanging his head.
+"I thought my will was too strong for him to get control of me. He
+called for people to come up from the audience and I laughed with the
+rest to see him make fools of the boys,--making them eat tallow
+candles for bananas, and scream when he threw a cord at them and said
+it was a snake, and things like that. But I was mighty proud of my
+strong will, and the boys dared me to go up and let him have a try at
+me, so I went."
+
+"And did he make you sign a check?" I asked, incredulously.
+
+"Not then. That was too public. He knew his business too well for
+that. But he got control of me." There was something pitiable in the
+man's trembling admission. "He hypnotized me before I knew it, and
+when I came to, I was standing on a chair in the middle of the stage,
+trying to pull my pants up to my knees, because he had told me that I
+was an old maid, and there was a mouse on the floor, and the boys out
+in front were rolling over with laughter."
+
+"That was very unkind," said Jean, indignantly.
+
+"I was ashamed and I was mad," the old man continued, "and I knew the
+boys would make everlasting fun of me, so next day I went up to see
+him at the hotel. I thought if I could talk to him, man to man, and
+without the fancy fixings of the stage, I could maybe find out how it
+was did. He was pleasant and smiling and talked easy, and then I don't
+remember one thing after that. Just a smoke in my mind. I suppose he
+hypnotized me without my knowing it."
+
+"That is possible, I suppose, since he had had control of your will
+before. What next?"
+
+"The next thing I knew, I was walking up the road home, feeling queer
+and dizzy in my head. I couldn't remember how I got out of the hotel,
+nor nothing. And I didn't know what had really happened until I went
+to the bank to draw some money a month afterwards, and they told me I
+had checked it all away."
+
+"Is that possible?" I asked doubtfully.
+
+"Easy enough," he said bitterly. "I could see it clear enough
+afterwards. If he could make me believe I was an old maid afraid of a
+mouse, couldn't he just as easy make me think I owed him a thousand
+dollars and was making a check to pay it? I had my check book in my
+pocket when I went there, and it showed my balance, of course, so it
+was easy enough for them to find out how much they could ask for and
+not get turned down by the bank. The last check was torn out but the
+stub not filled in. And the bank showed me the canceled check all
+right."
+
+"Payable to whom?"
+
+"To Alfred Barker. But he was only the hired man, I could see that.
+Diavolo was the real one. Barker came and went when _he_ lifted his
+finger. But Alfred Barker's name was on the check, so _his_ name
+wouldn't show. I had time to think it all out afterwards."
+
+It was an amazing story, but I could not pronounce it incredible,
+especially when I recalled that significant "plus" of $1000 at Eden
+Valley, in Barker's memorandum book.
+
+"What did you do about it? Anything?"
+
+"I tried to follow them. Diavolo showed in other places, and I thought
+I could find them. I see there wasn't no use going to law about it,
+because I couldn't deny that I had signed the check, and I understand
+it ain't against the law to hypnotize a man. But if I could find them,
+I bet I could get some satisfaction out of Barker's hide, if I could
+catch him alone. I wasn't going to take any more chances with
+Diavolo." He shuddered.
+
+"You never caught up with them?"
+
+"No. They had always just gone on. Then they stopped the show business
+and I lost track of them, till I heard that Barker was in Saintsbury.
+I came as fast as I could, but--I was too late." His head fell forward
+on his breast, and he looked ready to collapse. His loss, the long
+pursuit, the disheartening ending, had broken him.
+
+Jean looked at me anxiously, and I understood, but it seemed to be too
+important to get all the information possible from the old man at once
+to give more than the barest consideration to his feelings. I poured a
+little whiskey into the cup of my pocket flask, and after he had
+choked it down he looked more equal to further cross-examination.
+
+"Did you ever hear Barker address Diavolo by name?" I asked.
+
+"No. I tell you he was the hired man."
+
+"What did Diavolo look like?"
+
+"He was about your height and build. Thin dark face. Long black hair
+and a soft black beard. Queer eyes that gave you the shivers."
+
+It was not an identifying description. Probably nineteen men out of
+twenty are of my height and build, which is in all respects medium;
+the long hair and black beard were probably stage properties; and the
+queer eyes might be merely Mr. Jordan's afterthought of what the
+hypnotizer's eyes ought to be.
+
+"Would you know him again if you saw him without his hair and beard?"
+
+He looked surprised, and then doubtful. "I don't know."
+
+But at this point the attendant nurse came up, and intimated plainly
+that I was a trespasser and transgressor, and that the interview was
+ended.
+
+"I'll come to-morrow and take you out for a drive, if the doctor
+thinks you are strong enough to go," I said, by way of keeping the
+door open for further details.
+
+"I must go home," he said, querulously.
+
+"The faster you get strong, the sooner you can go. Till to-morrow,
+then."
+
+Jean walked beside me quietly and sedately till we were outside. Then
+she turned to me with a flash of intense feeling.
+
+"What are you going to do for him?"
+
+"Find Diavolo," I answered promptly.
+
+"And make him give back the thousand dollars?"
+
+"If possible," I answered absently. My mind was more actively engaged
+with other features of the story than with the defrauding of the old
+farmer, and I was not sorry when I could put Jean on her car, so that
+I could wander off by myself to think the matter over. How far, if at
+all, this affair of Diavolo might have a bearing upon the murder
+mystery was uppermost in my mind. Suppose Diavolo and his "hired man"
+had quarreled. Suppose they had quarreled to the death? It was, of
+course, quite probable that a man of Barker's type would have many
+enemies, but here I was dealing not with probabilities but with a
+fact, however small it might be. There had been, in the recent
+past, an intimate relation between Barker and a man who was capable
+of touring the country as a hypnotist, a man who concealed his
+identity,--Ha, a motive! They had quarreled over the division of the
+thousand dollars, and Barker had threatened to expose him! His own
+death had followed! This chain had developed so rapidly and vividly in
+my imagination that it was a cold shock when my common sense recalled
+that I must establish some connection between Diavolo and Gene Benbow
+to make the thread complete. Whatever part Gene had played or had not
+played in the tragedy itself, he had confessed to the shot. The
+confession itself was a fact and must be accounted for, whether the
+thing confessed was a fact or not.
+
+Up to this time the only theory in my mind that was compatible with
+Gene's innocence was the theory of romantic self-sacrifice on his
+part. I had felt that if he was not guilty he was trying to save
+someone who was. Whom would Gene Benbow wish to save at any cost? Who
+had killed Barker? Who was Diavolo? Would one name answer all three
+questions?
+
+That was what I must find out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+WAYS THAT ARE DARK
+
+
+My preliminary investigations along the Diavolo trail extended over
+considerable time, and were intertwined with various other matters of
+more or less interest, but I shall condense the account here, so as to
+get on to the more intricate affairs that followed.
+
+To begin with, I wrote to the theatrical manager of each and every
+town that had been listed in Barker's note-book, asking if "Diavolo"
+had appeared there, under what management he had come, what his real
+name was, how he could be reached, and whether they had any letter,
+contract, or other writing of his. Then I wrote to the metropolitan
+agencies, and to various Bureaux of Information in the larger cities,
+and to all the public and private societies and persons whom I knew to
+have an interest in the occult, asking, in a word, if they knew who
+"Diavolo" was, and how and where one might come into communication
+with him. I threw out these baited lines in every direction that I
+could think of.
+
+Very soon the first answers came in. After I had received three or
+four I began to make bets with myself on the contents of the next one,
+though it soon became obviously unsportsmanlike to wager on what was
+so near a certainty. They were all alike. The man who had been
+placarded as "Diavolo" had never been seen anywhere until he had come
+to the theatre in the evening for the performance. All business
+matters had been handled by his agent, Alfred Barker. Barker had made
+the arrangements beforehand, sometimes by letter, sometimes in person,
+and he had always accompanied Diavolo at the time of the performance
+and looked after everything.
+
+"Barker looked out for Diavolo as carefully as though he were a prima
+donna with a $10,000 throat," wrote one imaginative manager.
+"Shouldn't wonder but what he was a woman, come to think of it. He had
+a squeaky kind of voice on the stage, and he kept himself to himself
+in a very noticeable way. He wore a beard, but it may have grown in a
+store. I know his hair came out of a shop all right."
+
+Most of the answers were less imaginative, but equally unsatisfactory.
+Barker had stood in front of Diavolo and shielded him from observation
+so effectively that no one but Barker really knew what he looked like.
+And Barker could not now be consulted!
+
+Before long I began to receive answers to the inquiries I had flung
+farther afield as to the reputation of Diavolo among those who might
+be supposed to know all professional hypnotists. These replies were
+also of a surprising and disappointing uniformity. No one working
+under that name was known. Most of my correspondents contented
+themselves with this bald assertion, but some of them made suggestions
+which led me on to further inquiry. One man suggested that "Diavolo"
+might possibly be one Jacob Hahnen, who had disappeared from the
+professional field some two years before, following his arrest on
+account of the death on the stage of one of his hypnotized victims,
+while in a state of trance. That looked like a plausible suggestion,
+and I at once engaged a detective to trace Jacob Hahnen. I may say
+here, (not to mislead you as far as I was misled,) that Hahnen
+established a perfect alibi, so that pursuit went for nothing. I did
+not waste time or money on another suggestion, which was to the effect
+that a famous hypnotist who was supposed to have died in California
+some years ago, might have gone into retirement for reasons of his
+own, and have come out of it temporarily under an alias. It might of
+course be possible, but there was nothing tangible to work upon.
+
+One thing became clear to me in the course of this investigation.
+There were more professional hypnotists in the country than I had had
+any idea of, and their ways were dark and devious. They were
+accustomed to work under assumed names, and more or less to cover
+their tracks and hide in burrows. I came across some quite amazing
+literature on the subject,--circulars issued by Schools of Hypnotism,
+offering to teach, in a course of so many lessons, for so much money,
+the art of controlling people by occult power.
+
+"A knowledge of this wonderful faculty," one announcement claimed,
+"will enable you to control the will of the person to whom you are
+talking, without his consent or even his knowledge. Think of the
+advantage this will give you in your business! All taught in twenty
+lessons, mailed in plain cover."
+
+"Lies and nonsense," I said to myself. But something within me
+bristled uneasily, as at the approach of an evil spirit. It had not
+been nonsense to poor old William Jordan.
+
+I took to reading scientific books on hypnotism, to discover what
+powers or disabilities were actually admitted or claimed for this
+abnormal state. It was not quite so bad as the commercial exploitation
+of the subject, but it was disquieting enough. In general it seemed to
+be assumed that a normal person could not be hypnotized without his
+consent the first time, but that if he once yielded to the will of the
+hypnotizer, his own will would be so weakened thereby that afterwards
+he might find it quite impossible to resist. It was a moot question
+whether a person could be compelled to commit a crime while in a
+hypnotized state. Some writers insisted that a person's moral
+principles would guide him, even though his mind and will were
+paralyzed. I confess it looked to me to be open to question. Morality
+is generally more of a surface matter than mind, and would therefore
+be more easily bent.
+
+It was a tremendous relief to get away from this commerce with the
+powers of darkness to talk with Jean Benbow,--though my part in the
+conversation was not conspicuous. I was rather like the wooden trellis
+upon which she could train her flowers of fancy! William Jordan grew
+stronger under the care of the hospital, but he was not a young man,
+and he had had a heartbreaking experience. It was some time before he
+was equal to the return to Eden Valley, and in the meantime I saw as
+much of him as I could, encouraging him to talk about Diavolo whenever
+he was in the mood, in the hope that something might develop which
+would serve me as a clue. Several times I took him out driving, and
+whenever possible I got Jean to go with us. This was partly because
+the old man had taken a fancy to her, and she put him at his talkative
+ease, and partly because she was a delightful little companion on her
+own account.
+
+One day, when we were out toward the suburbs, she said suddenly, "Oh,
+let's go down that street."
+
+We went accordingly, and came presently to a quaint old church,
+covered with ivy.
+
+"That is where I am to be married," said Jean with quiet seriousness.
+She leaned forward as we drew nearer to watch it intently.
+
+"Really!" I exclaimed. "May I ask if the day is set?"
+
+"Oh, no," she said simply. "I only mean that when I am married I shall
+be married in that church."
+
+"Why, pray?"
+
+"My mother was married there," she said gently, and a look of
+moonbeams came into her eyes.
+
+"Oh! That makes it seem more reasonable. But aren't you taking a good
+deal for granted in assuming that you are going to be married? Maybe
+you will grow up to be a nice little old maid, with a tabby cat and a
+teapot. What then?"
+
+She did not answer my foolish gibe for a minute, and I feared I had
+offended her. But after a moment she said, with that quaint
+seriousness of hers:
+
+"Do you know, that is a very hard question to decide. I have thought
+about it so often. It would be very splendid, of course, to fall in
+love with some great hero, and go through all sorts of awful
+tragedies, and then have it come out happily in the end, and of course
+one would have to be married if it came out happily, though it is kind
+of hard to think of what could happen next that would be interesting
+enough to make a proper climax, don't you think so? _Just_ to live
+happy ever after seems sort of tame. So I have wondered whether, on
+the whole, it would not be more romantic to cherish a secret passion
+and grow old like withered rose leaves and have faded letters tied
+with a worn ribbon to be found in your desk when you were dead."
+
+I considered the situation with proper seriousness. "Who would write
+the letters?" I asked.
+
+"Oh,--"
+
+"Some young man who was desperately in love with you, of course?"
+
+"Why, yes," she admitted.
+
+"Well, what would you do with him? I don't believe any young man with
+proper feelings on the subject would be willing to efface himself in
+order to let you cherish his memory. He'd rather you would cherish
+him. I'm sure I should, if it were I."
+
+"Oh!" she murmured with a startled dismay that was delicious.
+
+"Did you happen to have any young man in particular in mind," I asked,
+"or is the position vacant?"
+
+She looked up at me from under thick eyelashes in a rather bewildering
+way. "Quite vacant," she said.
+
+"I'm supposed to be rather a good letter-writer," I suggested.
+
+"I should have to be particular, if they are going to last a long time
+and be read over and over again," she said demurely. "Have you had any
+experience in writing that special kind of a letter?" (The sly puss!)
+
+"No experience at all. But you would find me willing to learn and
+industrious."
+
+"I'll consider your application," she said, with dignity. "But I
+haven't yet decided that on the whole I should not prefer a wedding to
+a package of yellow letters. I don't know. I can just see myself
+sitting by a window in the fading twilight, with those letters
+in my lap, and it looks awfully interesting. But it would be
+disconcerting--isn't that the right word?--if no one else saw how
+romantic and beautiful it was. Of course I should know myself, and
+that counts for a good deal, but it does seem more _lonesome_ than a
+wedding, when you come to think of it, doesn't it?"
+
+"It certainly does. Whatever you may have to say against weddings,
+they are not lonesome."
+
+"Oh, well, I don't have to decide just yet," she said, with an air of
+relief. "It is a long way off. Only, if I ever _do_ get married, it
+will be in that little church, no matter if I am off at the North Pole
+when I am engaged and intend to go back there to set up housekeeping
+the next day. I made a vow about it, so as to be quite sure that I
+should have the strength of mind to insist on it. When you have made a
+vow, you just _have_ to carry it out, you know, in spite of torrents
+or floods or _anything_."
+
+I agreed heartily. And the time came when the memory of that foolish
+chatter just about saved my reason.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+THE SIMMERING SAMOVAR
+
+
+One day it occurred to me to ask Fellows if he was keeping up my
+advertisement for Mary Doherty, from which I had heard nothing so far.
+His start and confusion were an obvious confession.
+
+"N-no, not now. I did run it several times."
+
+"I told you to keep it in until further orders. Don't you remember?"
+
+He did not answer. I could not understand his manner.
+
+"I am sorry if you didn't understand. We have probably lost an
+opportunity,--certainly have lost time. I count on getting important
+information from Mrs. Barker, if we can find her."
+
+"What sort of information?" asked Fellows doggedly. I thought he was
+trying to minimize the results of his neglect.
+
+"Well, almost any information that would enable us to fix Barker's
+associates would probably be valuable. More particularly, I want to
+find out whether there is anyone who wants to marry her and couldn't
+while Barker was alive."
+
+I succeeded in attracting Fellows' attention, at least. He stared at
+me in silence, as though he were turning the thought over.
+
+"I'll advertise again," he said, but without enthusiasm.
+
+I think it was that day that I had a disconcerting interview with
+Burleigh, the editor of the Saintsbury Samovar. I have mentioned, I
+believe, that some independent public-spirited citizens were trying to
+make Clyde run for mayor. (It was one of those anti-ring waves of
+reform which strike a city once in so often, and are temporarily
+successful because good business men work at them for a season. The
+success is seldom, if ever, more than temporary, because the good
+business men go back to their jobs as soon as things are running
+smoothly, while the ring politicians never really drop their jobs for
+a minute.)
+
+Well, Clyde had cold-shouldered the proposition, but rather
+half-heartedly. Probably there is no man living who does not have some
+political ambition. Certainly Clyde had it. With his wide interest in
+public matters, his natural power over men, and his ancestry and
+associations, I knew that nothing but the shadow of fear at his elbow
+had kept him out of the political game, and I was therefore not
+surprised when, a few days after the Barker tragedy had ceased to
+occupy the upper right-hand corner of the first page of the
+newspapers, that space was given up to announcing that Kenneth Clyde
+had consented to accept the reform party's nomination. I sympathized
+with the relief which I knew lay back of the acceptance.
+
+This was the political situation when I met Burleigh. He was the
+editor of the evening paper which supported the ring and damned
+reform, and of course I knew where he stood as regards Clyde's
+candidacy. But when he stopped me on the street that noon, he didn't
+speak of Clyde.
+
+"Hello, how's the lawyerman?" he said, taking my hand where it hung by
+my side and shaking it without regard to my wishes in the matter.
+
+I resented his familiarity with my hand and with my profession, but
+the convention of politeness, which makes it impossible for us to tell
+people our real feelings about them, constrained me to civility.
+
+"Very well, thank you," I said, carelessly, and made a move to go on
+my way.
+
+He turned and fell into step with me.
+
+"I'd like to ask what you lawyers call a hypothetical question," he
+said. "Just a joke, you understand,--a case some of the boys were
+talking about in our office. Read of it in some novel, I guess. Some
+said it would be that way and some said it wouldn't. In law, you
+know."
+
+"Well, what is the question?" I asked, as politely as my feelings
+would permit. (Funny idea people have, that a lawyer learns law for
+the purpose of supplying gratuitous opinions to chance acquaintances!
+I shouldn't think of asking Burleigh to send me the Samovar for a
+year, just to satisfy my curiosity!)
+
+"Why, it's this. If a man has been convicted of murder--the man in the
+story was--and then makes his escape and lives somewhere else for
+twenty years or so, and is finally discovered and identified, how does
+he stand in regard to the law?"
+
+You may guess how I felt! The hypothetical case was so exactly Clyde's
+case that for a moment my brain was paralyzed. I was so afraid of
+betraying my surprise that I did not speak. I merely nodded and smoked
+and kept my eyes on the ground.
+
+"There's no statute of limitations to run on a sentence of the court,
+is there?" he asked, eagerly.
+
+"No," I said, with professional deliberation. "No, if you are sure
+that you have your facts all straight. But you don't often get law
+entirely disentangled from facts, and they often have unexpected
+effects on a question. What novel did you get that from?"
+
+"Oh,--I don't know. I just heard the boys talking about it, and I
+wondered."
+
+But he looked so eager that I could not help feeling the question was
+more significant to him than mere literary curiosity would explain.
+
+"You think, then, that there might be some element in the situation
+that would perhaps complicate it?" he asked.
+
+"It is never safe to form an opinion without knowing all the facts," I
+said, oracularly.
+
+"But if the facts are as I stated them,--an escape from justice after
+conviction, and nothing else,--then the man is still liable to the
+law, isn't he?"
+
+"Probably," I said, with a shrug intended to intimate that the matter
+was of no special interest to me. "How did it turn out in your story?"
+
+Burleigh looked at me sideways for a moment. Then he said,
+imperturbably, "Why, I believe he made the mistake of going into
+politics, and so the thing came out. He was hung--in the story.
+Politics is no place for a man who has a past that he doesn't want to
+have come out."
+
+"No doubt you are right about that," I said lightly.
+
+"Of course I am. I'm in the business," he said emphatically. "If a man
+has a past--that sort of a past, I mean,--he ought to know enough to
+stick to--philanthropy or architecture or collecting, or something
+else nice and private. This your street? Well, good day, Mr. Hilton.
+Glad I met you." He tipped his hat and left me.
+
+You can imagine the state of my mind. I puzzled over the situation for
+an hour, and then telephoned Clyde and asked him to drop into my
+office.
+
+Clyde came that same afternoon. I told him of the Burleigh interview
+as directly as possible.
+
+"Now you can judge for yourself whether it means anything sinister," I
+concluded.
+
+"The Samovar is for the ring, of course," he said, thoughtfully.
+
+"Of course. And Burleigh's recommendation that a man in that
+predicament should confine himself to architecture, or some kindred
+avocation, instead of trying to break into politics, didn't sound
+altogether accidental."
+
+He nodded comprehendingly, and smoked in silence for a few moments.
+Then he looked up with a smile.
+
+"I think I'll go on the theory that it was accidental."
+
+I hadn't expected that, and I couldn't approve.
+
+"As your lawyer, I must warn you that you are taking a serious risk,"
+I said earnestly. "If Barker shared his secret with someone, who has
+gone with it to Burleigh, you are exactly in your old situation. It
+would be better to let the sleeping Samovar lie and give up the
+mayoralty."
+
+He continued to smoke for a minute, but I saw the obstinate look in
+his eye that a mettled horse tales on when he doesn't mean to heed
+your hints.
+
+"You don't understand, Hilton," he said after a moment, "but since
+Barker's death I have felt free for the first time in fifteen years. I
+like the sensation. Very likely I have gone drunk on it and lost my
+senses, but I like the feeling so much that I am going to snap my
+fingers at Burleigh and pretend that he has no more power to influence
+my actions than he would have had if--well, if Tom Johnson had never
+got into trouble."
+
+"You think the mayoralty is worth the risk?" I asked.
+
+"The mayoralty? No! Not for a minute. But--this sense of freedom is."
+
+"But it is your freedom that you are risking."
+
+He stood up, and though I could not commend his judgment, I had to
+admire his courage. There was something finely determined in his
+attitude as he tossed away his cigar and put his hands in his pockets.
+
+"I am going to have it out with my evil destiny this time," he said,
+with a quick laugh. "Better be hanged than to skulk longer. I shall go
+on the theory that Burleigh has merely been reading some giddy
+detective stories."
+
+"Don't forget that there are some crimes which don't achieve the
+immortality of a detective story, because they are never explained," I
+said warningly.
+
+He merely smiled, but I knew my warning would go for nothing,--and
+secretly I was glad. There are things more to be desired than safety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+ON THE TRAIL OF DIAVOLO
+
+
+Jordan gained rapidly in strength, and was soon in condition to
+return, a sadder, wiser, and poorer man, to Eden Valley. I determined,
+however, to accompany him, and see if I could gather on the ground any
+further details about the serpent, my inquiries by mail bringing, as I
+have told, but unsatisfactory answers. But before leaving Saintsbury,
+I called again upon my client in the jail. I found him, as always, the
+gentle, nice-mannered, puzzling youth.
+
+"I am going away for a while in your interests," I said, by way of
+greeting.
+
+"That's awfully good of you," he said gratefully. Then with polite
+concern he added, "I hope you aren't giving yourself any trouble--"
+
+"Oh, I sha'n't mind a little inconvenience when it is in the way of
+business," I said drily. "It may be a matter of entire indifference to
+you, but I want to win my case!"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course," he said with anxious courtesy. I could see that
+he had no idea what I meant! There was no use trying to arouse him in
+that way, and I might as well accept his attitude.
+
+"Did you know that Barker had a partner?" I asked abruptly.
+
+He shook his head with an air of distaste. "No. I know nothing about
+him. I shouldn't, you know."
+
+"You never heard of Diavolo?"
+
+"Not the opera?" he asked doubtfully.
+
+"No. A professional hypnotist with whom Barker was connected in a
+business way."
+
+"No, I never heard of him."
+
+"Did you ever hear of William Jordan? Or of Eden Valley?"
+
+"No." He looked puzzled.
+
+"I have an idea that it may have been Diavolo who shot Barker!" I said
+carelessly.
+
+He looked surprised, and then, deferentially and hesitatingly, he
+expressed his dissent.
+
+"I suppose you feel that you have to fight for me, as my lawyer,
+but--what's the use in this case? I don't understand these things, of
+course, but I'd rather have it settled with as little fuss as
+possible. I shot him, and I am not sorry, and--I'd like to have it all
+over with as soon as possible." His voice was steady enough, and the
+gallant lift of his head made me think of his sister, but I thought I
+saw a look of dread somewhere back in his eye. Perhaps he was
+beginning to weaken! I determined to press the point a little.
+
+"And yet it is a pity to have your life run into the sand in
+that way," I said earnestly. "There might be much for you in the
+future,--success, love, honor,--" I watched him closely. His face
+quivered under the probe, but he did not speak.
+
+"Miss Thurston is heartbroken," I added, relentlessly.
+
+He looked at me as a dumb animal under the knife might look, and then
+he dropped his face into his hands. I pressed the matter while he was
+at my mercy.
+
+"If you did not shoot Barker,--if you are in fact innocent,--don't,
+for Heaven's sake, let any foolish idea of saving someone else lead
+you to lie about it. There could be no one worthy of saving at that
+cost. And, besides, if you are lying, I am going to find out the truth
+in spite of you."
+
+He lifted his head, but he did not look at me.
+
+"I am not lying. Why should I? I supposed anyone would believe a man
+who said he had done--a thing like that."
+
+"I wish you would tell me about it again,--just what you did." (I
+wanted to see if his story would vary.)
+
+He dropped his eyes to the floor thoughtfully. "I went to his office,"
+he said slowly. "I went through the outer office and into the inner
+office. They were both empty. I locked the door and waited. I watched
+through a hole in the curtain over the glass in the door. A man came
+in, waited a little, and went out. Then Barker came. I waited till he
+came close to the door. Then I fired. I saw him fall. Then I went down
+the fire-escape and got out into the street." As he finished, he
+raised his eyes from the floor and looked at me. His glance was not
+entirely frank, and yet I could not call it evasive.
+
+"There was no one else in the room with you?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"You saw no one else at any time except the man who came into the
+outer office?"
+
+"No one else."
+
+"And him you do not know?"
+
+"No."
+
+"If I should tell you it was I?"
+
+He looked at me, puzzled and doubtful. "Was it you?"
+
+"Wouldn't you know? Didn't you see the man's face?"
+
+He hesitated. "N-no."
+
+"Then how did you know it wasn't Barker?"
+
+"Why,--it wasn't."
+
+"Since you meant to give yourself up to the police, why did you go
+down the fire-escape instead of out through the hall?"
+
+He looked distressed. "I--don't know." Then he seemed to gather his
+ideas together. "My mind is confused about much that happened that
+night, Mr. Hilton. The only thing that stands out very clearly is the
+fact that I shot him. And that is the only thing that is really
+important, isn't it?"
+
+And that was the most that I got out of the interview.
+
+I had to admit, in face of this, that it was partly obstinacy which
+made me hold to the idea that he was not telling the whole truth. The
+fact that he had not recognized me, though he must have had me under
+close observation for a long time, and the fact that some one in the
+inner room had been eating apples, and that some one not he,--this was
+really all I had to support my point of view. But these were facts,
+both of them, and a fact is a very obstinate thing. A very small fact
+is enough to overthrow a whole battalion of fair-seeming fabrications.
+I felt that I was not throwing in my fortune with the weaker side when
+I determined to follow the lead of those two small facts to the bitter
+end.
+
+The pursuit led me in the first place to Eden Valley. I took poor
+William Jordan to his home, a farm lying just outside of the village,
+(and not more than two hundred miles from Saintsbury,) and then I
+returned to the village. It was a country town of about 2000, with one
+main hotel. I judged that Diavolo and Barker would have to lodge there
+if anywhere, and on inquiry I found my guess correct. They were not
+forgotten.
+
+"Oh, that hypnotist chap!" said the landlord. "Yes, he was here in the
+summer. Had a show at the Masonic Hall. Say, that's a great stunt,
+isn't it? Ever see him?"
+
+"No. What was he like?"
+
+"Oh, he was made up, you know,--Mephistopheles style. Black pointed
+beard and long black hair and a queer glittering eye."
+
+"But when he was not made up? You saw him here in the hotel in his
+natural guise, didn't you?"
+
+"Nope. Funny thing, that. He kept in his room, and the man that was
+with him, Barker I think his name was, he did the talking and managed
+everything. Diavolo acted as though he didn't want to be seen off the
+stage. Wore a long cape and a slouch hat when he went out, and had his
+meals all sent up."
+
+"Was he tall or short?"
+
+"Medium. Rather slim. Long, thin hands. Say, when he waved those hands
+before the face of that old farmer sitting on a chair on the stage, it
+was enough to make the shivers run down your back. I don't know
+whether it was all a fake or not. Most people here think it was, but I
+swan, it was creepy."
+
+"Did you know the farmer?"
+
+"Oh, yes,--old Jordan. Lives near here. Terrible set up about having a
+strong will, and said nobody could hypnotize him. Say, it was funny to
+see him think he was a cat, chasing a rat, and then suddenly believe
+that he was an old maid and scared to death of a mouse, and jumping up
+on a chair and screaming in a squeaky little voice."
+
+"Diavolo woke him up, didn't he?"
+
+"Oh, yes. And then the old man tore things around. He came here the
+next day to see the man in the daylight, and dare him to try it
+again."
+
+"Did he do it?" I asked, wondering how much of Jordan's story was
+known to his neighbors.
+
+"Oh, I guess not. He went up to Diavolo's room, I remember, and when
+he came out he wouldn't talk, but just went off home."
+
+"And you never heard Diavolo's real name?"
+
+"Nope. Trade secret, I suppose. Probably born Bill Jones, or something
+else that wouldn't look as well on the billboards as Diavolo."
+
+I went to the Masonic Hall, where the "show" was given, but there I
+met the same difficulties. Barker had made all the arrangements and
+been the mouthpiece. The mysterious Diavolo had appeared only at the
+last moment, cloaked and made up for stage effect, and had held no
+conversation with anyone. They all thought his assumption of mystery a
+part of his profession. I saw in it a persistent care to hide his
+identity. I could only hope that some momentary carelessness or some
+accident would give me a clue. His very anxiety to hide his real name
+made more plausible my theory that Barker's knowledge of it might have
+been the occasion of his death. In the olden times, the masons who
+constructed the secret passages under castle and moat were usually
+slain when the work was done, as the most effective way of ensuring
+their silence.
+
+From Eden Valley, I went to Illington, the next place mentioned in
+Barker's memorandum book. Here it was much the same. The two men had
+stopped at the hotel over night, but Diavolo had kept out of sight,
+while Barker had transacted all the business and made all the
+arrangements. I realized that I was dealing with people who used
+concealment as a part of their business.
+
+The same story met me at Sweet Valley, at Lyndale, at Hawthorn, at
+Dickinson. It was not until I reached Junius that I found what I had
+hoped for and had begun to despair of finding,--a personal
+recollection of Diavolo.
+
+"Oh, yes," the landlady at the hotel said. "He was here. Raised the--I
+should say, raised his namesake with a toothache."
+
+She was a jolly landlady, and she laughed at her own near-profanity
+till she shook. She had probably worked the same joke off before.
+
+I smiled,--it wasn't hard, in face of her own jollity. "What did he
+do?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, tramped up and down his room just like an ordinary man. Couldn't
+eat his supper. Kept a hot water bottle to his face, though I told Mr.
+Barker it was the worst thing he could do. Mr. Barker was distracted.
+It was getting to be near the hour for the performance, and Diavolo
+wouldn't go on. Not that I blame him. A jumping tooth is enough to
+upset even a wizard."
+
+"How did it turn out?"
+
+"Oh, he went to a dentist and had it out, and--"
+
+Things danced before my eyes. I felt like shouting "Now hast thou
+delivered mine enemy into my hands." It seemed almost incredible that
+what I could hardly have dreamed of as a possibility could be the
+plain actual fact.
+
+"Do you know what dentist he visited?" I asked, trying to speak
+casually.
+
+"Oh, yes. Mr. Barker inquired at the office, and went with him.
+Diavolo was very careful about not being seen, and even then he wore a
+wig. I knew it was a wig, because he had got it crooked, tossing
+about, and some light hairs showed about his ear."
+
+"What dentist did you send him to?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Dr. Shaw."
+
+"And he isn't dead or moved away or anything like that?"
+
+"Oh, no! He has his office right around the corner. He boards in the
+house, and I always like to throw business in the way of my boarders
+when I can."
+
+"I think I shall have to see him on my own account," I said. I almost
+expected an earthquake to swallow up Dr. Shaw before I could get
+around the corner, but I found the office still in place, all right,
+and the doctor himself, looking rather pathetically glad to see some
+one enter. He was a dapper little man, with a silky moustache and an
+eternal smile. (Not that his looks matter! But whenever I think of
+that interview, I see that humble, ingratiating smile.)
+
+"What can I do for you?" he asked gently and caressingly.
+
+"I am not in need of your professional services, Doctor Shaw, but I
+should like to obtain some information from you, if you will allow me
+to take some of your time at your regular rates. I am a lawyer, and I
+am anxious to establish the identity of a man who was here in the
+summer under the name of Diavolo,--a professional hypnotist. Mrs.
+Goodell, of the Winslow House, tells me that she sent him to you to be
+relieved of a toothache."
+
+"Yes, I remember. I extracted a tooth for him," Dr. Shaw said at once.
+"I could perhaps have saved it, but it would have required treatment,
+and he insisted upon having it extracted, as he was to appear on the
+stage that evening."
+
+"Was there anything peculiar about the formation of his jaw, do you
+remember? Any irregularity, for instance?"
+
+The dentist smiled. "Yes. Decided irregularity. His jaw was peculiarly
+long and narrow, and the teeth, which were large, were crowded. On
+both sides the upper teeth formed a V."
+
+"Like this?" I asked, taking the model which Dr. Kenton had made for
+me from my pocket.
+
+"Exactly like that," he said, after examining it critically. "Wasn't
+this made from his mouth?"
+
+"That is what I want to ascertain."
+
+"It would be extraordinary to find two persons with the same marked
+peculiarity," he said thoughtfully.
+
+"Would that peculiarity be enough to establish the man's identity?" I
+asked.
+
+"Perhaps not. But I could identify Diavolo positively and beyond
+question, if that is what you mean. There were other distinguishing
+marks. The first lower left molar was gone, and replaced by a bridge,
+for instance. And the second molars in the upper jaw had both been
+extracted,--probably to relieve the crowding. The conformation was
+unmistakable, and very unusual."
+
+"Then if I ever get my hands on Diavolo, you can identify him,
+regardless of grease paint and wig?"
+
+"Unquestionably."
+
+"I hope most heartily that I may be able to give you the opportunity.
+You have done me a great service as it is. For the present, I can only
+tell you that your information will serve the cause of justice."
+
+
+Can you guess my elation? I should certainly have astonished the staid
+people of the prim little town if I had allowed myself to express the
+state of my feelings. My wild goose chase had not been so wild, after
+all! I had not yet bagged the game, to be sure, but I felt that I had
+winged it. Certainly I ought to be able to convince any jury that if
+Barker's former partner was in the room from which the fatal shot had
+been fired, the chances were strong that he had had something to do
+with it. And that he was there I could prove. The apple in which he
+had left the imprint of his curiously irregular teeth was freshly
+bitten; and the toothache which had driven the cautious Diavolo from
+his cover of silence and forced him, by stress of physical agony, to
+the intimate personal relation of a patient with his dentist, had
+identified him as the man. It only remained to find--him!
+
+What Eugene Benbow's connection with the affair could have been was so
+much of a mystery that I could form no conjecture. One thing at a
+time. When I had unearthed Diavolo, the other things might clear
+themselves up. Sometimes one missing piece will make a puzzle fall
+into shape and everything appear coherent.
+
+I had been away from Saintsbury on this search for over a week, and I
+was anxious to get back. I wanted to find out whether my advertisement
+for Mary Doherty had brought any answer. I wondered whether Benbow had
+grown more communicative. I wanted to see Jean, who must be having a
+time of it, living with her queer, unaffectionate guardian. I wondered
+whether Fellows had attended to things at the office. But I didn't
+think of the one thing that had actually happened. I found out what it
+was when the newsboys came on the train with the Saintsbury papers.
+The Evening Samovar had exploded. It had come out with Clyde's story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+THE SAMOVAR EXPLODES
+
+
+The Saintsbury papers were thrown on our train several stations beyond
+the town. I bought one, of course, and unfolded it with a cheerful
+feeling of being near home again,--and there stared at me from the
+first page the glaring headlines,--
+
+
+          CLYDE A CRIMINAL
+
+      THE REFORM CANDIDATE FOR MAYOR
+          A FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE
+
+        AMAZING RECORD OF CRIME AND
+         CONCEALMENT DISCOVERED BY
+                THE SAMOVAR
+
+
+I tore my way through the leaded paragraphs. The only thing that was
+news to me was the clue on which the Samovar had worked.
+
+According to the high-flown account, Barker had left at the Samovar
+office, on the night on which he was killed, a large sealed envelope
+addressed to himself, with the added direction:
+
+"If this is not called for within five days, it is to be opened by the
+Managing Editor of the Samovar."
+
+It would appear that this was the errand that was occupying Barker
+while I sat waiting for him in his office! I could not refrain from
+pausing to admire the rascal's cleverness. He was anticipating--not
+the death which came so swiftly, but--a visit from Clyde, or possibly
+Clyde's representative, and he had adroitly made it impossible for
+Clyde to control the situation by force or coercion. The story was
+written out and in the hands of the paper which would most gladly
+profit by the disclosure, though it was still, for five days, subject
+to Barker's own recall, if he were properly treated! It certainly was
+a reserve of the most unquestionable value in diplomatic negotiations.
+
+The Samovar went on to say that after the sensation of Barker's death,
+the envelope had been held inviolate for the specified time, and had
+then been opened by Burleigh in the presence of witnesses.
+
+The story as written by Barker was then set forth in full. It recited
+briefly that Barker had been present at a court trial in Houston,
+Texas, some fifteen years before, at which one Tom Johnson had been
+convicted of the murder of a man named Henley, and sentenced to death.
+The prisoner had escaped from the sheriff immediately after
+conviction, and had never been captured. Then Mr. Barker proceeded:
+
+"Two or three years ago I saw Mr. Kenneth Clyde in Saintsbury, and
+greatly to my surprise, I recognized in him the missing Tom Johnson. I
+charged him with the identity, and he did not deny it. He then and
+afterwards freely admitted to me that he was the man who, under
+another name, had been convicted of murder and had made his escape. I
+have refrained from making this information public out of
+consideration for Mr. Clyde, but I feel it a public duty to leave this
+record where, if certain contingencies should arise, it may be found."
+
+(The contingency which the writer had in mind was probably a refusal
+on the part of Clyde to continue paying blackmail. That would
+undoubtedly have made Mr. Barker's public duty weigh upon his tender
+conscience.)
+
+The Samovar then went on to say that the story at first seemed
+incredible, and therefore the witnesses were all sworn to secrecy
+until the matter could be investigated. A special representative had
+been sent to Texas to look it up. The writer then modestly emphasized
+the difficulties of the undertaking, and his own astonishing
+cleverness in mastering them. He had actually found the court records
+to establish the tale of the late lamented Mr. Barker, whose untimely
+taking off with this public service still unperformed would have been
+nothing less (under the present political circumstances) than a civic
+calamity. Tom Johnson had been convicted of the treacherous and bloody
+murder of his friend. (The details were then given in substantial
+agreement with the story which Clyde had told me.)
+
+"But who," the happy historian went on to say, "who would have
+guessed, who would have dared suggest, who would have ventured to
+believe, that this obscure criminal, snatching the stolen cloak of
+freedom from the heedless hands of careless officials, and skulking
+off with it by the underground passages known to the criminal
+classes,--who would have believed that this false friend, this
+wretch, this felon, was none other than the Reform Candidate for
+Mayor of Saintsbury? The charge is so incredible that we may well be
+asked,--Where lies the proof of identity, beyond the word of Alfred
+Barker, now cold in death? The man who so long had successfully
+covered up his past, may well have felt, when Barker met his tragic
+fate, that at last he could walk in security, since the one witness
+who, in a period of fifteen years, had identified him, was now
+disposed of. But murder will out. The truth, though crushed to earth,
+will live again. The sun in the heavens has been summoned as a
+witness. While Tom Johnson was in jail, awaiting trial, an
+enterprising paper of the place secured several photographs of the
+prisoner. These our representative found in an old file of the paper.
+We reproduce below, side by side, the photographs of Tom Johnson,
+lying under an unexecuted sentence for murder, and of Kenneth Clyde,
+reform candidate for mayor. They speak for themselves."
+
+They did, indeed. It was like a blow in the face to see the pictures
+side by side, even in the coarse newspaper print. The handsome,
+defiant face of the younger man had been softened and refined and had
+grown thoughtful,--but it was the same face. If Clyde had wanted to
+deny the accusation (though I knew that he would not think for a
+moment of that course,) it would have been fruitless. The photographs
+made it impossible.
+
+As I studied them, I thought that any woman who loved him,--his mother
+or another,--should certainly be ready to give thanks on her knees for
+the changes that the fifteen years had wrought. As a young fellow he
+had clearly been rather _too_ handsome. That any man with so much of
+the "beauty of the devil" had been marked by the stars for a
+tumultuous career was most obvious. There was spiritual tragedy in
+every lineament. On the other hand, there was no deviltry in the
+seriously handsome face of the man of to-day. You did not even think
+first of his good looks, the deeper significance of character had so
+come to the surface. Certainly, the shadow under which Clyde had lived
+had fostered the best in him.
+
+The newspaper scribe ended his paragraph with a cruel innuendo:
+
+"The sudden death of Alfred Barker at a time when Clyde had most to
+fear from the secret in his knowledge would have had a sinister
+appearance, if that apparent mystery had not been promptly solved by
+the confession of Eugene Benbow. Clyde should acknowledge his
+indebtedness to the convenient Benbow."
+
+The fact that I had had a bad quarter of an hour convincing myself
+that Clyde had had nothing to do with the matter did not make me less
+indignant with the astute newspaper scribbler. And I saw further
+complications in the subject. If I cleared Gene--as I fully meant to
+do--it would be necessary to do it by bringing the real murderer to
+light. To clear Gene by simply proving that he was not on the spot
+(assuming that to be possible) would be merely to transfer the shadow
+of doubt to Clyde. It was a bad tangle.
+
+The moment I reached the Saintsbury station, I tried to get into
+communication with Clyde. He might not care to have me act as his
+legal adviser in this more serious development of his case, but at
+least I must give him the opportunity to decline.
+
+It was eight o'clock when the train pulled in, and I went at once to
+the private telephone booth and tried to get Clyde. His office was
+closed and did not answer,--I had expected that. His residence
+telephone likewise "didn't answer." Then I called up the chief of
+police, and asked whether Clyde had been arrested, basing my inquiry
+on the Samovar story. He had not,--though it took me some time to get
+that statement out of the close-mouthed officials of the law. Then I
+called up Mr. Whyte's residence, hoping to get some hint of the
+situation as it affected my friends. It was Jean Benbow's voice that
+answered my call.
+
+"Oh, it's _you!_" she cried, and the intonation of her voice was the
+most flattering thing I have ever heard in my life--almost. "Oh, I
+always did know that there must be special providences for special
+occasions, and if anybody ever thinks there aren't, I'll tell them
+about your calling up at just this moment, and they'll _know_. The
+most _dreadful_ thing has happened,--"
+
+"I have seen the Evening Samovar. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"Oh, _yes!_ Mrs. Whyte is at my elbow and she says I must tell you to
+come right up here in a jiffy--only she didn't say jiffy, but that is
+what she meant. She says now that I must not stand here and keep you
+talking, though really I know it is I that is talking,--or should I
+say am talking? But you understand. And Mrs. Whyte says you must jump
+into a cab and come up at once. Mr. Whyte wants to consult with you."
+The communication stopped with an abruptness that suggested external
+assistance.
+
+It was Jean herself who admitted me. She must have been watching out
+for me, for she had the door open and was half way down the steps to
+meet me before I was fairly on Mr. Whyte's cement walk.
+
+"Oh, but I am thankful to see you," she said earnestly. "Ever since
+that paper came this afternoon, I have been in a dream! I mean an
+awful dream, you know,--almost a nightmare. It seemed so unreal.
+Though I suppose that is what real life is like, maybe?" She looked at
+me inquiringly.
+
+"I never saw anything like it before, and I have lived a real life for
+many more years than you have," I answered, meaning to reassure her.
+
+She looked at me under her lashes. "Oh, not so very many more! Not
+enough to--to make any real difference. But you don't know how queer
+it seems to me to have things happening like this all around you.
+First Gene, and now Mr. Clyde. Do you believe it is true, Mr. Hilton?"
+
+"I can't form an opinion from newspaper tales alone," I said
+evasively.
+
+By this time we were at the door, where Mrs. Whyte was waiting, with
+Mr. Whyte at her shoulder. They both looked worried.
+
+"You have seen the paper?" Whyte asked, while we were shaking hands.
+
+"Yes. On the train. Do you know where Clyde is?"
+
+"No. I tried to get him by 'phone, but I couldn't find him, and he
+knows where to find me, if he wants to. What do you think of it?"
+
+I could only repeat that I could not express an opinion without more
+reliable information,--blessed subterfuge of the lawyer!
+
+Mrs. Whyte broke in emphatically. "Well, I for one do not believe it.
+You needn't look so wise, Carroll, as though you meant to imply that
+we can't be sure of anyone until he is dead. I knew Kenneth Clyde when
+he wore knickerbockers and I knew his father and his uncle, and I
+simply don't believe it. The Samovar is nothing but a political
+scandal-monger, anyway."
+
+"It was a long time ago, Clara," Whyte said deprecatingly. "Clyde was
+young, and you know he was a wild youngster. And there may have been
+provocations of which we know nothing."
+
+"You are trying to excuse him, as though you thought the story true,"
+cried Mrs. Whyte indignantly. "I simply say that I don't believe it.
+Not for a moment."
+
+"I believe it," said a voice that startled us all. Katherine Thurston
+was standing on the landing of the stairs, looking down upon us as we
+were grouped in the hall. There was a tall lamp on the newel which
+threw a white light on her face, but it was not the lamp-light which
+gave it the look of subdued radiance that held our gaze. I confess I
+stared quite greedily, careless of what she was saying. But Mrs. Whyte
+recovered herself first,--naturally.
+
+"Katherine! What are you saying? Come down!"
+
+She came down slowly. There was a curious stillness upon her, as
+though she had come strangely upon peace in the midst of a storm.
+
+[Illustration: _"I believe it," said a voice that startled us all_.
+Page _186_.]
+
+"I should think you would at least wait for a little better evidence
+before believing such a thing of--of _any_ friend!" Mrs. Whyte chided
+indignantly.
+
+Something like a ripple passed over Miss Thurston's face. She was
+actually smiling!
+
+"I don't mean that I am eager to believe evil reports of Mr. Clyde,"
+she said gently. "But--it explains so much. I think it probably is
+true because it would--explain. And, of course," she added, lifting
+her head with a proud gesture that would have sent Clyde to his knees,
+"of course it makes not an atom of difference in our feeling toward
+_him_. We know what he is."
+
+Man is a curious animal. I was not in love with Katherine Thurston. I
+had never come within hailing distance of her heart and would have
+been somewhat afraid of it if I had; I had even suspected that the
+artificial calm which lay between her and Clyde covered emotional
+possibilities, past, present, or to come; and yet, now that I saw the
+whole tale written on her unabashed face, I felt suddenly as though a
+rich and coveted galleon were sailing away, forever out of my reach!
+
+It was probably only a bare moment that we were all held there silent,
+but the moment was so tense that its revelations were not to be
+counted by time. Then Jean, who stood beside me, suddenly clasped my
+arm with both her hands, in a gesture that I felt to be a warning. I
+looked down at her inquiringly. She nodded slightly toward the French
+window which opened from the library upon a side porch, and following
+her gesture I saw the shadow of a stooping man outside. Before I could
+reach the window, it was pushed open from without, and Kenneth Clyde
+stepped into the room. I don't think we were surprised,--we had
+reached a state of mind where the unexpected seemed natural,--but when
+Clyde stepped instantly aside from the window and stood in the shadow
+of the bookcase, we awoke to a realization of what his coming meant.
+
+"I beg your pardon for entering in this unceremonious way," he said
+(and there was a thrill of excitement in his voice that went through
+us all like a laughing challenge) "but I have been dodging the police
+for an hour, and I know I am followed now. If you would draw the
+curtain, Hilton,--"
+
+I drew the curtains over the windows, and Whyte closed the door into
+the hall. I think he locked it. The three women had followed us into
+the library, and though they stood silent and breathless, I do not
+think that Clyde could have had much doubt in his mind as to whether
+he held their sympathy.
+
+"I had to come for just a moment before I got out of town," he said in
+a hurried undertone. He spoke to the room, but his eyes were on
+Katherine Thurston, who stood silent at a little distance.
+
+"Tut, tut, man, you mustn't leave town," cried Whyte. "The worst thing
+you could possibly do! Ask Hilton here. He's a lawyer."
+
+Clyde smiled at me, but went on rapidly. "I am not asking advice of
+counsel on this,--I am acting on my own responsibility. I cannot take
+the risk of giving myself up to the authorities. I know what that
+means. I am going away,--there is nothing else to do. But I could not
+go without coming here for a moment. You--my friends--have a right to
+ask an account of me." He paused for a second in his rapid speech, and
+then went on with a deeper ring in his voice. "The newspaper story is
+true, so far as my conviction by a Texas court fifteen years ago goes.
+But I was convicted through a mistake. I am innocent of murder. But I
+could not prove it. That--" He laughed somewhat unsteadily, and his
+eyes held Miss Thurston's,--"that is the story of my life."
+
+We had none of us moved while he spoke, partly because he was so still
+himself, partly from a feeling of overshadowing danger which might
+descend if we stirred. But now Katherine Thurston moved toward him and
+he took a step to meet her. I think they had both forgotten all the
+rest of the world.
+
+"Couldn't you have trusted me?" she asked, in tenderest reproach.
+
+"I couldn't trust myself," he answered in a low voice.
+
+"Ah, there you were wrong!" she said quickly. "So many years! And
+now--"
+
+"Now I must go and see if there is any way to gather up the broken
+fragments."
+
+"Could I not help in some way? May I not go with you?" she asked
+simply.
+
+"You _would_ do that?" he demanded.
+
+"Anywhere," she answered.
+
+He lifted her fingers to his lips and hid their trembling upon her
+white hand. "No, you cannot go," he said, with a break in his voice.
+
+"Then I will wait for you here," she said.
+
+"Oh, my God!" he breathed.
+
+We came to our senses then, and Mrs. Whyte swept us out into the hall
+with one wave of her matronly arm. They must have that moment of
+complete understanding to themselves. We hovered at the foot of the
+stairs, waiting to speak again with Clyde, yet too upset in our minds
+to have any clear idea of what we could suggest or needed to ask. Mrs.
+Whyte, in a surge of emotion, caught Jean to her buxom bosom,--against
+which the child looked like a star-flower on a brocaded silk hillock.
+Jean's eyes were shining,--and not her eyes alone; her whole face was
+alight with a tender radiance.
+
+Whyte gripped my shoulder to turn my attention. "See here, Hilton, he
+mustn't run away. It would look like guilt. You must tell him, as a
+lawyer, that it would be the worst thing he could do. If he is
+innocent, the law will protect him,--"
+
+"The law has already condemned him," I reminded him. "The situation is
+difficult. He is not a man merely accused, his defense unpresented. He
+has been tried, convicted, and sentenced."
+
+"Good heavens!" he gasped. "Then if he puts himself in the hands of
+the law, there will be nothing left but to see the execution of the
+sentence? Is that what you mean?"
+
+"Yes. That is the situation. There have been cases where men who had
+escaped from prison have lived for years exemplary lives and reached
+civic honors, yet, when recognized and apprehended, they had to go
+back to prison and serve out the unexpired sentence of the man
+condemned years before."
+
+"But if the sentence was unwarranted?"
+
+"Of course we would try to make a fight on it," I said, but without
+much confidence. "But the sentence was pronounced by a duly qualified
+court, and it will not be easy to upset it at this late day. It would
+be a thousand times harder now to find any evidence there may be in
+his favor than it could have been then, when the events were fresh in
+the memory of everybody. And unless we can discover some new evidence
+having a bearing on the matter, we would have no ground on which to
+ask for a re-opening of the case."
+
+"That's terrible," he said. Then, dropping his voice, "Is the death
+penalty in force there?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"The man was a fool to hang around home," Whyte protested
+energetically, as he took the situation in. "Why didn't he have sense
+enough to go to South America or Africa, or the South Sea Islands when
+he first escaped?"
+
+As if in answer to his question, the library door opened, and
+Katherine Thurston stood framed in the doorway. She had the same
+curiously still air that I had noticed when she stood on the
+stairs,--as though her spirit had found the way into a region of
+mysterious peace.
+
+"He has gone," she said quietly.
+
+There was a sudden tap at the front door, and then, without further
+warning or delay, it was opened, and a police officer stood there.
+
+"Is Mr. Clyde in the house?" he asked directly.
+
+"No," Whyte answered.
+
+The officer glanced about the room with a swift survey of us all.
+
+"He's gone, then?" he said.
+
+No one answered.
+
+"Sorry to have troubled you," he said, touching his helmet, and
+immediately went out. We heard low voices and hurried steps passing
+around the house.
+
+"Oh, they'll find him!" cried Mrs. Whyte in dismay. "He can't have got
+a safe distance yet."
+
+"Hush!" warned Whyte. He stepped to the library and looked out. Then
+after a moment he came back to us. "They are watching the house. The
+longer they watch, the better! Do you know his plans, Hilton?"
+
+I shook my head. Miss Thurston had faded away like a wraith but Mrs.
+Whyte and Jean were hanging on our words. "No, I have no idea where he
+is going, or what he means to do. The police are very close on his
+heels. I confess it looks dubious that he will get very far."
+
+Jean laughed out suddenly and clapped her hands together.
+
+"Why, of course he will escape! After they have come to know about
+each other!" she exclaimed. "Nothing else would be possible, _now!_"
+
+Whyte and I exchanged glances. As a matter of fact, we would all like
+to live in a rose-colored world, where things would happen of
+necessity as they do in properly constructed fairy tales, but it takes
+the confidence of a Jean to announce such faith in the face of
+unsympathetic Experience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+TANGLED HEART-STRINGS
+
+
+There was racing and chasing on Saintsbury lea the next morning. The
+office of the Samovar was besieged by people who wanted to know
+whether the charge against Clyde was a campaign lie, a poor joke, or a
+startling truth. Reporters and inquiring friends camped on Clyde's
+doorstep, blockaded his office,--and insisted on extracting some
+information from his lawyer! Information is a valuable commodity which
+a lawyer is trained not to give away for nothing, so my visitors went
+away not much wiser than they came.
+
+"Has Clyde been arrested?" was asked everywhere.
+
+Apparently not.
+
+"But why didn't Burleigh, in the interests of justice, give his
+information to the police before publishing it broadcast and giving
+Clyde a chance to get away?"
+
+Probably Burleigh cared more for a Samovar scoop than for the
+interests of justice, and more for helping the campaign against Clyde
+than for either. Possibly, also, he did not care to take upon himself
+the responsibility of lodging a formal accusation against Clyde. He
+might, in that case, be held responsible for it.
+
+"But how had Clyde got the warning?"
+
+Nobody knew. He had simply disappeared.
+
+Of course his disappearance was considered equivalent to a confession
+of guilt. The wires were hot with his description, and the noon
+editions had columns of conjecture and reassuring reports that the
+police were in possession of valuable clues which could not be made
+public.
+
+I could barely get time to run through my accumulated mail. A good
+part of this related to Alfred Barker. I had started inquiries
+backward along the shadowy track of that slippery gentleman's career,
+hoping that I might come across some trail of Diavolo's in that
+direction. So far as results went, Mr. Barker might have been the most
+commonplace and harmless of mortals. He had lived here, he had done
+business there, he had been through bankruptcy and he had been
+promoter of several business schemes that were little better than
+bankruptcy, but chiefly he had managed to be unknown for long
+intervals. How some of those intervals were filled, I could in a
+manner guess. Probably his venture as business manager for Diavolo was
+an instance. And that one had not been particularly successful
+financially, except in the deal with Jordan, if I might regard
+Barker's note-book as an accounting of the profits.
+
+I was busy in an inner office, trying to assimilate my mail, when
+Fellows, my clerk, brought me word that Miss Thurston was waiting to
+see me. As I knew we should be liable to interruptions in the outer
+office, I had him bring her in.
+
+I saw at a glance that this was a different woman from the
+self-possessed woman of the world I had known. She was human, womanly.
+Her eyes met mine with a shy appeal for sympathy.
+
+"We all come to you for advice," she said with a deprecating smile.
+
+"That is the chief compensation of my profession."
+
+"There are three things that I want to speak to you about," she
+continued. "First, Mr. Clyde's safety. I have been thinking about
+things all night, turning them in my mind one way and another, and
+that is the point that must be considered first. If he is taken, or
+gives himself up, what prospect is there that he will ever be
+cleared?"
+
+"Very little, Miss Thurston. You wish me to be frank."
+
+"I want to know the exact truth. In the eyes of the law, he is merely
+an escaped convict?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She was perfectly quiet and self-controlled. I could see that she
+merely expected me to confirm the impression which her intelligence
+had already discerned. She did not hesitate in her quiet speech.
+
+"Then the second thing is to get word to him. I have written him a
+letter." (She laid it on my table,--a nice, thick letter it was, too!)
+"I have told him in this letter that I am ready to go with him to any
+island of the sea or desert jungle where he will be safe. I want you
+to know, because it may happen that you will get word to him only by
+telegraphing. But tell him what I have told you, if you cannot give
+him my letter. If you should see him, the letter will be enough to
+make him understand. And if he should hesitate on my account, and talk
+about not letting me sacrifice myself,--he may, you know,--will you
+make him--understand?" There was a mist in her eyes as she finished.
+If she looked at Clyde with that look, he would have to be a man of
+iron not to yield!
+
+"Trust me to do the very best I can to deliver your commission. But
+Clyde has disappeared, as you know. I may not hear from him before you
+do."
+
+"Yes, I know. I am only providing for the chance,--in case you do. I
+have been thinking of everything, trying to put myself into his mind,
+and I think he will come or send to you."
+
+She spoke with quiet assurance.
+
+"I shall be only too glad to serve you--or him."
+
+"Then there is another matter." A slightly embarrassed air replaced
+the fine lack of self-consciousness which I had been admiring. "I wish
+that you would tell Eugene Benbow."
+
+I felt myself stiffen. Unconsciously I was politely obtuse.
+
+"Tell him what? I beg pardon!"
+
+"Tell him about Mr. Clyde's escape and--everything that has gone
+before."
+
+"Oh, yes, certainly. He will be interested."
+
+"And tell him--about my message."
+
+"You wish him to know?" I asked, in a matter-of-fact manner.
+
+"Yes, I wish him to know,--but I don't want to be the one to tell
+him."
+
+"You think it will hurt him?" I asked, determined to draw her out,
+since she had given me the opening. I realized that to women emotions
+are facts, and that impressions, attitudes and relations are quite as
+substantial as any of the more material things of which the law takes
+notice. It might be that the key to Gene's mysteriousness lay in
+emotions rather than in facts.
+
+She lifted her eyes with something of an effort, but I saw that she
+had determined to treat me with frankness.
+
+"It probably _will_ hurt him," she said, "but it will be salutary."
+
+"In the long run, yes. But--poor fellow!"
+
+"I know! But it wasn't my fault. You know a boy of his poetic and
+romantic sort simply has to adore someone, and I even thought it was
+better for him to waste his emotional efflorescence on me than on some
+woman who might not have understood."
+
+"I am quite sure you are right," I said. But at the same time I could
+not help a feeling of dumb sympathy with poor Gene, and a certain
+impatience with her philosophic view of the situation. As Kipling
+says, it is easy for the butterfly upon the load to preach contentment
+to the toad. The toad, too, has some rights.
+
+"Besides, he knew always--or, at least, for a long time--that Mr.
+Clyde was more to me than anyone else. He always was," she continued
+bravely, "even in the old times, before--anything happened. And I
+knew, as a girl does, that I was more to him than anyone else. Then,
+when he drew away and would not say what I had expected, of course I
+was hurt and angry and very, very unhappy. But when years and years
+had gone by, and I saw that what I wanted was not coming, I determined
+to keep him as a friend. I knew that something had happened, something
+against his will. So I realized that it was wrong to blame him, and
+that I must keep what I could have, on the best terms possible. It was
+really Eugene that made me come to this understanding of myself."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Of course Gene knew from the beginning that it was a case of the moth
+and the star,--don't smile! I mean simply on account of our respective
+ages, of course. But to make sure that he should not misunderstand,
+I--told him something about Mr. Clyde."
+
+"That was fine and generous of you," I cried warmly, ashamed of my
+momentary reproach.
+
+She flushed with sensitive appreciation of my change of attitude. "I
+even told him that if he could ever render a service to Mr. Clyde, it
+would be the same as if he did it for me. I thought it would be a good
+thing to awaken his chivalry in that way."
+
+"But you had no reason at that time to suppose that Mr. Clyde was in
+danger?"
+
+"No specific reason," she said, with some hesitation. "But I felt that
+something overshadowed him. A woman knows things without reason,
+sometimes."
+
+"And you told Eugene?"
+
+"Yes. Partly I wanted to let him feel there was something he could do
+for me,--you understand. And partly, too, I wanted to enlist his
+interest for Mr. Clyde, if an opportunity should ever come up where he
+needed help that Eugene could give. You never can tell."
+
+"You can't ordinarily," I admitted. "But at present poor Gene has put
+himself out of the way of doing a service for anyone. His hands will
+be tied for a long time."
+
+"But--you do think there is a possibility of getting him off, don't
+you? He is so young!" Miss Thurston rose as she spoke, and in spite of
+her kindly tone in regard to Gene, I could see that the important part
+of the interview was over when Clyde passed out of our conversation.
+
+"Of course I should not admit anything else," I answered, and she
+departed, leaving me impressed anew with the important part which
+women play in the affairs of men. Truly, sentiments may be stronger
+than ropes, and emotions more devastating than floods. And the woman
+who is all tenderness and quivering watchfulness for one man will be
+as indifferent as Nature to the sufferings of another. I was sorry for
+Gene. Prison was not the worst of his trials.
+
+It was not a particularly pleasant mission on which Miss Thurston had
+sent me. I went to the jail for an interview with Gene with very
+uncomfortable anticipations. It isn't pleasant to hit a man whose
+hands are tied,--and that my communication would be in the nature of a
+blow to him I could not doubt.
+
+He looked nervous and harassed, and the innate courtesy which
+characterized him was, I felt, the only thing that kept him from
+resenting my visit.
+
+"I hope you haven't come to talk about that wretched Barker," he said
+at once, trying to smile, but betraying the effort in the attempt.
+
+"Not unless you wish to."
+
+He shook his head. "No. I told you all about it once. I don't want to
+think about it any more. It makes me--ill."
+
+"Very well. We'll gossip about our friends instead. Have you heard
+about Clyde?"
+
+He half turned aside, but answered with apparent indifference. "Yes,
+they let me see the papers."
+
+"He has disappeared, it seems. There has been no trace of him, yet."
+
+There was a hint of youthful scorn in his voice as he answered. "Well,
+if he likes to live that way. I think on the whole I should prefer to
+give myself up and have it over with."
+
+"Clyde insists that he is innocent. That would of course make a
+difference in the feeling about giving oneself up. His conscience is
+not involved in the question. Besides," I added, seeing my chance to
+discharge Miss Thurston's commission, "he has to think not alone of
+himself. Miss Thurston's happiness is bound up in his safety."
+
+The boy did not speak. I could feel, however, that he was holding
+every nerve tense. I knew what he wanted to know, and I went on, with
+as casual an air as I could muster.
+
+"It seems that they have been in love with each other for years, but
+of course with the knowledge that this possibility of exposure was
+hanging over him, he could not speak. Now that it is out, and the
+worst is known, they have come to an understanding. It was inevitable,
+under the circumstances."
+
+"Do you mean she will marry him?" he asked, in a low voice.
+
+"Probably, in time. For the present, of course his whereabouts are
+unknown. But I should think that probably, in the end, she will go to
+him. At her age," I added deliberately, "a woman has a right to choose
+her fate. She will not go to it in ignorance."
+
+He laughed, but without mirth. "As you say, she is old enough to know
+her own mind," he said, somewhat brutally. Then he added, bitterly,
+"It seems I did not shoot Barker quite soon enough."
+
+"Why _did_ you shoot him?" I asked.
+
+His eyes fell. "Because he killed my father." Then he turned his
+shoulder to me with an impatient gesture. "I told you I would not talk
+about that any more." And he wouldn't. For all his good manners, my
+client had a vein of obstinacy that was almost as useful, in case of
+need, as plain rudeness would have been.
+
+When I left Gene, I fell in with some friends who insisted upon having
+me give an account of myself over a dinner at the club, so it was
+something after nine when I reached my rooms. I lived at that time, as
+I think I may have mentioned, in an apartment hotel. My own suite was
+on the third floor. As I stepped out of the elevator, I saw three men
+lounging in the neighborhood of my door. They saw me, and set up a
+shout of "Here he is," which brought in two more who had apparently
+been taking the air on the fire-escape.
+
+"To what am I indebted,--?" I began. They grinned cheerfully and
+simultaneously.
+
+"Oh, we just wanted to find out if you couldn't give us a story about
+Clyde," the foremost explained,--and I recognized the clan. They were
+reporters on the trail of Breakfast Food for the Great American
+Public.
+
+"Come in, and tell me what you want to find out," I said resignedly.
+"If you can extract any information from my subconscious self, I hope
+you will share it with me."
+
+"You'll read it in the papers to-morrow," said the cheerful tall one.
+"Have you any idea where Clyde is?"
+
+"Why, yes," I answered thoughtfully,--and they all leaned forward like
+dogs on a leash. "Of course it is only a guess,--"
+
+"Yes, yes, we understand," they chorused eagerly.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, I figure it out this way. Mr. Clyde did not possess
+an aeroplane, and it is extremely doubtful that he was able to borrow
+one before he left. The most rapid means of transportation available
+to him would therefore be the automobile or the chou chou cars. He has
+been gone about twenty-four hours. Multiply twenty-four hours by forty
+miles and you get the radius of a circle of which Saintsbury is the
+center--"
+
+They interrupted my demonstration with shouts and jeers.
+
+"You trifle with the power of the press," said the tall one. "Wait
+till to-morrow morning and you will see what happens to your remarks.
+The public will have reason to understand that we have reason to
+understand that Mr. Hilton has reason to understand that Mr. Clyde is
+not a thousand miles distant from Saintsbury at this time!"
+
+While I had been speaking, my eye had fallen upon the stub of a cigar
+on the mantel. Now, I had not been in my room since morning,--and I do
+not smoke before luncheon. While I talked nonsense to the men, my mind
+was engaged with that cigar stub. I had no reason to suppose that the
+chambermaids on that floor smoked, and nobody else was supposed to
+have access to my rooms. I sauntered across the room and picked up
+the stub and tossed it in the grate. It was fresh and moist. My eye
+went about the room. Half a dozen books from my shelves were lying
+about,--and it was absurd to suppose that the chambermaids had been
+indulging in my favorite brands of literature.
+
+"Let me offer you a cigar, gentlemen," I said, and went to the
+adjoining bedroom, closing the door behind me. My cigars were not in
+the bedroom, but the excuse served.
+
+There, with his feet on my best embroidered cushions, with my choicest
+edition de luxe on his knees and a grin on his face, sat Clyde.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+THE OUTLAW
+
+
+I shook my head at Clyde, and returned to the sitting room. "Have you
+seen Clyde since the news came out, Mr. Hilton?" the energetic
+reporter demanded, as I was passing the cigars around.
+
+"I have been out of town. I only returned last evening."
+
+"It seems that he left his office without any instructions, and nobody
+knows how to get his orders. And at his home nothing is known. He
+simply walked out of the door and disappeared."
+
+"Then the chances are that he is far enough away by this time."
+
+"But he'll be caught," the man said confidently. "It is one of the
+hardest things in the world for a man to be lost in this world of
+rapid communication. His description has been wired all over the
+country. The police in every city in the land will have their
+eyes open. Sooner or later--and the chances are that it will be
+sooner--some one will tap him on the shoulder and say, 'You're wanted,
+Mr. Clyde.' And he'll forget himself and answer to the name. They all
+do it. Sooner or later."
+
+He wagged his head wisely.
+
+"That's so," chimed in the others, and story after story was told of
+the unconscious way in which men in hiding would betray themselves. It
+was entertaining enough, but I was on needles to have them go, and I
+got rid of them as soon as I could. I waited until I saw them actually
+leave the building before I dared let Clyde out of the bedroom. He
+came out smiling and undisturbed.
+
+"Are your prophetic friends safely out of the way?" he asked.
+
+"All gone. How in the name of mystery did you get in here?"
+
+"You look more surprised than hospitable!"
+
+"And more anxious than either, I dare say, if my looks show my
+feelings. How are you going to get away?"
+
+"Walk away. And very soon. But first, I wonder if you could get me
+something to eat. Absurd how dependent we civilized beings are on our
+meals! There may be more serious matters to be considered, but at
+present my chief anxiety is as to whether you happen to have a box of
+crackers and a piece of cheese in your rooms."
+
+"We'll do better than that," I answered, and I promptly telephoned to
+a near-by restaurant for a substantial meal.
+
+"Now, while we are waiting, tell me how you got in," I said.
+
+"Oh, that was easy. I simply walked up. I thought I should find you,
+but you are an abominably early riser. The maids were cleaning the
+rooms, and so I simply watched for an opportunity to slip into one
+room while they were in the other. You have comfortable diggings here,
+and I commend your taste in pictures, but I vow I never saw so hungry
+a place in my life."
+
+"Have you really had nothing all day?"
+
+"Nothing since yesterday noon. It was about the middle of the
+afternoon yesterday that a fellow came to my office,--a man I had
+never seen. He told me that he was a typesetter on the Samovar. 'Beg
+pardon,' he said, 'but you're Mr. Clyde, aren't you?' I acknowledged
+it. He said, 'I'm a machine operator on the Samovar, and I had a
+"take" just now that had a story about you in it. Some dirty story
+about your having been convicted of murder and escaping before you
+were hung.' 'Indeed?' I said. 'It was kind of you to warn me. To whom
+am I indebted?' He looked down and shuffled his feet. 'Oh, I'm nothing
+but a machine operator, but I don't want to see a man that is bucking
+the ring knifed.' And that is all that I know about him."
+
+"Some local politician, probably."
+
+"Yes," he laughed. "It is a queer world, the way we are bound up with
+each other. If I hadn't accepted that nomination on the Citizens'
+ticket, that bow-legged little machine man, who probably had to lose a
+day's wage to get away and warn me, would never have bothered. He took
+the trouble because I was _his_ candidate."
+
+"By the way, I saw Miss Thurston to-day. She gave me this letter to
+get to you if I should have a chance." And I gave him her letter and
+turned away to arrange his supper while he should read it. I rather
+fancy he forgot his hunger for a few minutes. I could guess something
+of what Miss Thurston must have written by his face. It was white with
+emotion when he finished. He put the letter into his pocket-book,
+carefully. Then he turned to me, half laughing but without speaking,
+and wrung my hand. We understood each other without anything further.
+
+"What, specifically, did you come back for?" I asked, while he was
+eating.
+
+"Well, partly because the enemy would be looking for me elsewhere, but
+chiefly because I had to get some money. How much have you about you?"
+
+I emptied my pockets and spread the loot before him.
+
+"Not so bad," he said. "I'll give you a check for it, and date it
+yesterday. Then I should like to have you, as my lawyer, take
+possession of the papers in my desk. There are insurance policies that
+have to be taken care of, and some other matters that can't be
+neglected. And the Lord knows when I can come back."
+
+"No one else knows," I assured him.
+
+He smiled. I could see that he was too uplifted to really care very
+much about such trivialities as I had my mind upon.
+
+"You don't advise me to stay and brazen it out, then?" he said,
+quizzically.
+
+"On the contrary, I advise you to clear out. I don't see the ghost of
+a chance for you if the law gets its hands upon you."
+
+"Then a judicial error can never be corrected?"
+
+"The only thing that would give us any excuse for reopening the case
+would be some new evidence having a bearing on the situation. Have you
+any reason to suppose that you can unearth any significant facts now
+which you could not discover when the affair was fresh in the memory
+of everyone?"
+
+He shook his head. "No. That looks hopeless, I must admit. You advise
+me, then, to bury myself somewhere beyond reach of the extradition
+laws?"
+
+"Exactly. And, considering everything, I can imagine worse fates."
+
+He smiled. "So can I," he said musingly. For a man with a price on his
+head, he seemed singularly happy. It was clear that the letter in his
+pocket was the most potent writ in the world just then.
+
+Then he put dreams aside, and gave me specific directions as to
+certain matters of business that he wished looked after. It was on
+toward eleven o'clock before our talk was finished, and he rose to his
+feet.
+
+"What are your plans now?" I asked.
+
+"To get out of town, first. I must walk. Let me have that stick of
+yours, will you? I think I shall have to go stooping over a cane, to
+escape notice. And when I have an address to give you, I'll let you
+know."
+
+"All right," I agreed.
+
+He pulled his hat into a bedraggled shape over his ears, and walked
+stiffly about the room, bent over the cane. I had not guessed him
+so good an actor. I walked with him down the street a few minutes
+later,--and I knew that he carried a lighter heart into exile than he
+had carried through all the popularity and success of the last fifteen
+years. After making sure that he was not followed or observed, I left
+him, and returned home. I took a different route, one that brought me
+through a little park, where a fountain plashed in the soft night air,
+and the trees bent over the benches whereon homeless tramps and cosy
+"twos" enjoyed the last minute of freedom. As I crossed the park by
+one of the diagonal asphalt paths, my eye was caught by the familiar
+aspect of the drooping shoulders of a man who sat beside a girl on a
+secluded bench. It looked like Fellows. He moved slightly, and I saw
+that I was not mistaken. That he should be spending the evening in the
+park was not remarkable, but that he should be in close conversation
+with a girl was distinctly surprising. But I was very glad to see it.
+A girl would be the best panacea for his moodiness. I would not
+embarrass him by giving any sign of recognition. I therefore walked
+past with my eyes ahead, but just as I came opposite, the girl moved
+and the light of the street lamp fell on her face. I had seen her
+before,--for a minute I could not remember where. Then it came to me.
+She was Minnie Doty, Mr. Ellison's housemaid. How in the name of
+wonder had Fellows picked up an acquaintance with her?
+
+I wished afterwards that my delicacy had not led me to go by without
+speaking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+THE GIFT-BOND
+
+
+For some days I was so much occupied with Clyde's affairs, and other
+business matters which demanded my professional attention, that I saw
+little of any of my friends in a social way, but toward the end of the
+week Mr. Whyte asked me over the telephone to come up to dinner. I was
+only too glad to go, but I confess that when I saw Jean was not
+expected, I was so disappointed that I began wondering how I could cut
+the evening short enough to give me a chance to run in at the next
+door.
+
+"I asked Jean to come over," said Mrs. Whyte, unconsciously answering
+my unspoken question, "but the dear child had something else on for
+this evening."
+
+Mr. Whyte chuckled without disguise. "Jean has a beau," he said, with
+an air.
+
+"And if she has, Carroll," Mrs. Whyte took him up, with instant
+sex-championship, "it is nothing to make remarks about. Jean is quite
+old enough to receive attention, and he is an unexceptionable young
+man. I don't think it is delicate of you to make comments."
+
+"Who is making the comments?" he demanded good-humoredly.
+
+"Well, you _implied_ comments, and I don't want you to do it when Jean
+is around. When a girl has no mother and is, besides, as wilful as
+Jean is,--and she _is_ wilful, Katherine, although I admit she is
+charming about it, and I should be in love with her myself if I were a
+man,--the sooner such a girl is married to a steady young man, the
+better."
+
+"Is the steady young man Mr. Garney?" I asked. The annoyance with
+which I had observed his prostration before Jean probably betrayed
+itself in my voice, for Miss Thurston looked up to answer
+reassuringly.
+
+"Oh, it is not a serious matter. Mr. Garney was a friend of Eugene's,
+and Jean, bless her heart, would listen to a jointed doll if it could
+say 'Gene.' Besides, it was Mr. Ellison who asked him to come over
+this evening. He seems to have quite taken Mr. Garney up,--has him
+over frequently."
+
+"By the way, Clara," said Mr. Whyte, "I asked Ellison for that
+contribution to your Day Nursery. You would have done better to ask
+him yourself. He turned me down hard,--said he had just had to make a
+thousand dollar payment unexpectedly and was hard up."
+
+The talk shifted, but I confess it had made me uncomfortable. I had
+had nothing against Garney until I saw him bowled over by Jean, and
+then I immediately took a violent dislike to him. Yet she probably
+regarded his devotion merely as pleasantly flattering.
+
+I was uncommonly glad, therefore, to find Jean waiting for me in my
+office the next afternoon. Fellows was away, and she was sitting at
+my desk in a stillness that was more than patient. It was tense. An
+odd-shaped package was clasped in her hands.
+
+"Well, little Story-Book Girl, are you waiting for the prince?" I
+hailed her. There was something in her sweet absurdities that always
+made me feel as though we were playing a game.
+
+"I was waiting for you," she said sedately.
+
+"Lucky me! And poor disappointed prince! I can see him, in a green
+velvet suit, with a long, dejected feather in his drooping cap,
+waiting around the corner of your imagination for you to give a glance
+in his direction. That's all that would be necessary to bring him to
+life. Instead of that, you are wasting your thoughts--wasting them
+according to _his_ notion, of course, not mine!--on a chap who is
+already alive!"
+
+She smiled perforce at my foolery, but her smile was a trifle
+tremulous. I felt a trouble back of it, that must be treated
+respectfully.
+
+"Is there anything the matter, Miss Jean?" I asked.
+
+"There's Gene!" she said, a little reproachfully. Her eyes searched
+mine.
+
+"Oh, I know! Of course! But there isn't anything new?"
+
+She hesitated the barest moment. "That's enough," she breathed.
+
+"But _that_ is coming out all right!" I said reassuringly.
+
+She turned her questioning eyes upon me again, and her look went
+deeper than ever before. It suddenly struck me that I was foolish to
+insist upon regarding and treating her as a child. Her eyes were
+unfathomable, but the mystery that veiled them belonged to womanhood,
+rather than to childhood.
+
+"Do you say that just to keep me from fretting," she asked gravely,
+"or do you really know anything that is going to save Gene? Really and
+truly clear him and--and give him back to me?"
+
+The seriousness and maturity of her manner had so impressed me--I was
+on the point of saying "had so imposed on me," and I don't know but
+what that would be the right word--that I took the hazard of answering
+her with the bare and simple truth.
+
+"No, I don't know anything that is going to clear your brother. But I
+have a confidence which I feel sure is going to mean a victory. I
+can't say anything more. But it is a long time yet to the trial."
+
+She seemed to shiver a little at the word, and withdrew her eyes. I
+waited for a moment, thinking that if she had any special anxiety on
+her mind she would of necessity betray it if left to herself, but when
+she spoke it was on a totally different matter.
+
+"You are going away?" It was a statement rather than a question.
+
+"What makes you think that?" I parried. I had indeed a very definite
+intention of going away, but I hadn't mentioned it to anyone, and I
+didn't care to have my plans known.
+
+"Why, I thought you would probably go to hunt up Mr. Clyde. When you
+find him, I wish you would give him this." And she handed me an old
+letter in a faded envelope.
+
+"But you are quite likely to see Mr. Clyde as soon as I do," I
+protested.
+
+"I'd rather you had it," she said vaguely. "There is no hurry.
+Sometime he would like to have it. It is an old letter that my father
+wrote to my mother many years ago. He mentions Mr. Clyde in it, and
+says nice things about him, so I thought he might like to keep it."
+
+"I am sure he would," I said warmly. "You are a dear little girl to
+think of it. And if you really want me to take charge of it, I will. I
+shall probably see Mr. Clyde sometime, or at least hear from him. But
+I shall be jealous of Mr. Clyde pretty soon. Here you give me an
+interesting letter, to be handed on to Mr. Clyde. And Miss Thurston
+gives me a lovely thick letter--but not for me at all, only for me to
+hand to Mr. Clyde. Happy Mr. Clyde!"
+
+She listened with an uncertain smile and wistful eyes, as though she
+were holding back some brooding thought. There was something odd in
+her manner that half worried me.
+
+"I have something for you, too," she said after a moment. "I have been
+looking through an old trunk of keepsakes that I keep at Uncle
+Howard's,--things that belonged to my mother, mostly,--letters and
+presents from my father, and all marked. She had kept that letter
+because it was written on her birthday, once, when he was away from
+home. And then--" he hesitated a moment, and then extended the package
+to me,--"this is for you, if you will please take it, as a keepsake."
+
+"How sweet of you," I murmured. But when I unwrapped the packet, I was
+dumbfounded. It was a beautiful mother-of-pearl cigar case, mounted in
+silver, and set with an elaborate monogram in small diamonds. "Why,
+child!" I exclaimed in protest.
+
+"It was my father's," she explained. "It was a presentation thing,--he
+was always getting them. You see, he was always doing splendid things
+for people. I like to remember that he was that kind of a man."
+
+"But shouldn't it go to Gene?"
+
+"No, he gave it to me for my very own, because I was so proud of it. I
+want you to have it,--to remember me by."
+
+"I'm not going to forget you,--ever," I said, taking both her hands in
+mine. Forget her! I realized at that moment that I had taken her for
+granted as belonging in my life permanently. I simply could not
+imagine having her go out of it. The idea raised a queer sort of
+tumult within me.
+
+"Then you will take it," she said, again pressing the case upon me.
+"Because I want you to have it,--I want you to."
+
+"I am very proud to have it," I said gravely. To refuse that urgent
+voice, those beseeching eyes, would have been impossible. I'm not a
+graven image. She beamed at my acceptance. It was exactly like a
+rain-drenched flower lifting its head again.
+
+"And I want a good-bye present from you to me, too," she said with a
+sort of breathless haste, leaning toward me in her eagerness.
+
+"A 'good-bye' present! Why, my going away is not serious enough for
+all that ceremony. I shall be back before you really know that I have
+gone."
+
+"But you'll give me something, won't you?" she persisted, putting my
+disclaimer aside. "Some little thing, you know! Your pencil, or
+something like that."
+
+"I can do better by you than that," I cried gaily. I opened my office
+safe and took from it' the locket with the emerald heart of which I
+have already spoken. It was the only thing I possessed which could by
+any stretch of courtesy be considered a worthy exchange for the cigar
+case. Her eyes widened like a child's at the sight of the trinket.
+
+"But not for me, surely," she cried.
+
+"For no one else in the world. I got it, intending it for this
+portrait of my mother,--which you see I am going to take out; it
+doesn't fit very well;--and then I discovered that my mother hated the
+idea of emeralds. So you see it hadn't been intended for her, really.
+It was waiting for you,--if you will accept it. You don't dislike
+emeralds?"
+
+She did not answer except by a little choked laugh, but her face was
+eloquent for her. Suddenly she lifted the locket to her lips.
+
+"Oh, come!" I cried, feeling that I must somehow break the tension
+under which she was laboring. "Perfume on the violets is nothing to
+such extravagance as kisses on the emeralds. Speaking of violets, let
+us go down and see if Barney has any to-day. He might, by luck. If he
+has, we'll buy him out."
+
+I picked up the cigar case to put it away, and I confess I was on the
+point of putting it into my safe when some instinct struck me between
+the eyes and I pretended I had only gone there to lock up. I brought
+the case back in my hand, then formally transferred the cigars from my
+own case to it, tossed that into the waste-basket, and slipped the
+be-diamonded thing into my pocket as calmly as though diamonds were my
+daily wear. She beamed, and for the first time the trouble that had
+been hovering in her eyes seemed to melt quite away.
+
+"Oh, thank you!" she cried. "You _do_ understand beautifully. I think
+you are a Story-Book Man yourself."
+
+"Do you know, I always have felt that I had undeveloped capacities in
+that direction," I admitted confidentially. "Only it took a Story-Book
+Girl to find them out. Come, we will celebrate the day with violets."
+
+Barney had heaps of violets, fortunately, and we had great fun finding
+places to fasten them upon her. Barney needed only a crumb of
+encouragement to show himself up picturesquely, and I was glad to set
+him going, for I wanted to see the shadow on Jean's face entirely
+disappear. They had become good friends on their own account, it
+seemed, and Jean was cheeking him delightfully in return for some of
+his sly remarks, when suddenly she stopped and I felt a little shiver
+run through her. Another man had stopped before Barney's stand,--Mr.
+Garney, the Latin tutor. His eyes were so eagerly intent upon Jean
+that he hardly took note of my presence.
+
+"You look like Flora herself, Miss Benbow," he said, raising his hat.
+"Are violets your favorites?" (I saw that he was laying the
+information away for future reference, and I wanted to choke him on
+the spot.)
+
+"They are to-day," she answered, demurely. "But I may prefer something
+else to-morrow." (Wasn't that neat, and dear of her?)
+
+I was very glad to have this opportunity of seeing Jean and Mr. Garney
+together, because I admit that Mrs. Whyte's gossip had disturbed me. I
+therefore made no move to hurry Jean away, but pretended to talk to
+Barney while I watched the other two together. I fancy Barney
+understood the situation pretty well, for he glanced shrewdly from me
+to Mr. Garney and back, as though he would see if I, too, understood.
+But the result of my observation of their mutual attitude was wholly
+reassuring. Garney was crazy about her, of course,--that was obvious.
+But Jean was heart-whole and unimpressed. Of that I felt quite sure,
+and I recognized the fact with a relief that measured my previous
+disturbance. So long as she was not dazzled, no harm could come of it.
+He couldn't marry her against her will!
+
+How well I remember all the trivial events of that afternoon! After
+loading her down with violets, we went to a confectioner's and had
+some gorgeous variety of ice-cream, and I did my best to restore her
+to her usual rose-colored view of life. She responded beautifully, and
+we had a very gay time. But when I left her at her own door, finally,
+the wistfulness returned.
+
+"You _are_ going away, aren't you?" she asked.
+
+"Why, I shall have to, in order to feel that I have a right to keep
+that cigar-case, since it was given to me as a good-bye present."
+
+She stood very still for a moment, searching me with her deep eyes.
+Then she put out her hand impulsively.
+
+"Good-bye," she said breathlessly, and fled into the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+A VOICE FROM THE PAST
+
+
+The next day brought me a strange letter from William Jordan, the
+defrauded farmer whom I had left in Eden Valley. He wrote:
+
+
+"Dear Mr. Hilton:--I don't know as I ought to say anything, because
+maybe it ain't you after all, and if it be you, I suppose you don't
+want me to know or you would have guve your name, but at the same time
+I don't see who else it could be, and I ain't used to taking presents
+without saying thank you. This is what I mean. I got a letter from the
+First National Bank at Saintsbury the other day and there was a
+cashier's check for $1000 in it, for me, and nothing to explain why
+they sent it. I wrote to find out if it was a mistake and they say no
+they sent it per instructions but can't give no names. I suppose it is
+meant to make up for the thousand that Diavolo got, but nobody knows
+about him but you. Anyhow I am very thankful, and if you don't want
+the thanks yourself you can pass them on to the right party if you
+know who he is.
+
+     "Your respectively,
+
+          "William Jordan."
+
+
+I wrote promptly to Mr. Jordan telling him that I was not his unknown
+benefactor and that I was almost as interested as he could be in
+learning who the donor was. It was clearly significant. Whoever had
+sent it _knew!_ Whether the restitution was prompted by remorse or by
+benevolence, it indicated knowledge of the loss. I laid the situation
+before Fellows, who already knew about Jordan.
+
+"Do you think you can possibly discover who bought that check?"
+
+He looked dubious. "Bank business is always confidential."
+
+"Well, it's up to you, because I am going away for a trip. But I'll
+give you a starter. Howard Ellison's account may possibly show a
+similar debit."
+
+"Mr. Ellison has been buying some new microscopes and other
+apparatus," Fellows said casually.
+
+"How in the world do you know that?" I asked. Fellows was the most
+surprising fellow.
+
+He flushed and looked embarrassed. I did not press the point, because
+I knew if he didn't want to answer he wouldn't.
+
+"Ellison certainly had some connection with Barker," I said, watching
+him. "There was a check of Ellison's in Barker's pocket when he was
+killed."
+
+Fellows looked up with interest. "Then that would belong to his widow.
+If he has one," he added, as an afterthought.
+
+"Undoubtedly it would."
+
+"May I ask if you know the amount?"
+
+"Two hundred and fifty."
+
+He looked disappointed.
+
+"You think that isn't enough to induce her to come forward?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose it might be worth claiming," he said slowly. "But I
+think his widow's chief gain is in her freedom from a rascal."
+
+"You can't help sympathizing with the man who shot him, can you?" I
+said.
+
+His cheek twitched. Perhaps it was a checked smile.
+
+"I sympathize with him and I think he did a service to the community,"
+he said in a low voice.
+
+"You are probably quite right," I mused. "And yet the law would not
+see it in that light."
+
+"Oh, the law!" he said, with the contempt that the blind goddess never
+failed to arouse.
+
+Jean had been right in guessing that I meant to go away, but she was
+wrong in thinking that it was on Clyde's account. Probably I should
+have taken her more into my confidence, but it is always my impulse,
+both personally and professionally, to work out my theories by myself,
+without discussing them. The truth of the matter was that I was still
+on the trail of Diavolo.
+
+I had found, in my accumulated mail, a report of his appearance in a
+small Missouri town at a date somewhat later than the shows on the
+route I had already traced. It struck me that there might be
+significance both in the date and the distance. The Jordan coup had
+probably frightened them a little. They had jumped to this far-away
+point for one engagement, and then had retired to private life, Barker
+coming to Saintsbury. On the bare chance of discovering some
+particulars that might have significance, I set out for this town. I
+believe that I was upheld secretly by a feeling that somewhere,
+somehow, sometime, the truth would be revealed, if I only followed the
+trail long enough.
+
+At first I was met with the same baffling haze of obscurity. The local
+manager had taken Diavolo on as an emergency to fill a blank caused by
+the illness of a scheduled performer for that week. He doubted that he
+had appeared anywhere else in the State. He had never heard of him
+before, but was persuaded by Barker's fluency to give him a show,
+especially as his price was cheap.
+
+"That manager of his, Barker, said that Diavolo was a great man who
+had given shows long ago but was getting too high up in the world now
+to have his name connected with the business. Said he was really out
+of the business, but was making a little tour incog. to get some ready
+money, and as he had the newspaper reports to show from other places,
+I took him on."
+
+"Did he make good?"
+
+"You bet. He's the goods, all right. Say, it's a funny stunt, isn't
+it? I'm used to fake mysteries, of course,--I see enough of that sort.
+But when you run up against the real thing, like what Diavolo put up,
+it makes you feel the devil is in it, for a fact. Don't it, now?"
+
+"It does. And I want to catch him. Do you know anything that would
+help me to identify him? If you wanted him again, how would you go to
+work to find him?"
+
+"Look up Barker."
+
+"But Barker is dead, and his knowledge has died with him."
+
+The manager shook his head. "You've got your work cut out for you,
+then. Barker was the only one to come into the open. Diavolo always
+stood back and let Barker do the talking. Might have thought Diavolo
+was deaf and dumb for all you heard of him until he stepped out on the
+stage. Then he talked all right,--stage patter, of course, but
+clever."
+
+"You think then that this was not his first appearance on the stage?"
+
+"Hard to say. Barker said he was an old un, but that he had given it
+up to go into something else,--something respectable. I didn't believe
+it at the time, on general principles, but maybe he was giving it to
+me straight."
+
+I then followed the trail to the hotel where Diavolo had stopped, and
+here I encountered a girl who had her wits about her and knew how to
+use her eyes. She was the daughter of the landlady, and she acted as
+clerk, waitress, or chambermaid, as occasion required. She looked up
+with more than professional interest when I mentioned Diavolo's name.
+
+"You mean that dude that was here in the summer and read people's
+thoughts at the Orpheum? Say, wasn't he great! Know him?"
+
+"Not so well as I hope to. What did he look like?"
+
+"Oh, he had black hair and a beard, and eyes that kind of looked
+through you. Say, it's hard to describe a man, you all look so much
+alike,--oh, _dress_ so much alike, you know. But Diavolo was
+different, though I don't just know how to explain it. He was a
+sure-enough swell off the stage, wasn't he?"
+
+"What makes you think that?"
+
+"Why, I heard that man that was with him,--Barker, his name was,--I
+heard him say--You see, I was in the hall, and the transom of that
+room won't shut, so you just can't help hearing,--and Barker had a
+high voice anyway, and he said, 'You're a fool to give it up.' I
+didn't know what he was giving up, of course, but Barker went on, 'You
+can make money at this business hand over fist if you let me manage
+things, and you aren't making any money being respectable. What's
+respectability compared to the coin?' I often thought of that
+afterwards. There's something in it. And still, respectability is
+worth something," she added thoughtfully.
+
+"Was that all you heard? What did Diavolo say to that?"
+
+"Oh, I couldn't hear anything he said, because he spoke so low, but
+Barker said, kind of laughing, 'Just remember that I've got you on the
+hip, my boy. If I mention in the right place that you and the
+hypnotist Diavolo are one and the same, where will you be then?' And
+Diavolo must 'a' said something angry, for I heard Mr. Barker say,
+kind of sarcastic, 'No, you won't kill me, nor you won't do any other
+fool thing. You'll join in with me for good and all and we'll gather
+in the shekels.' And then I heard something that sounded uncommon like
+a chair swung over a man's head,--I've seen them do that in the bar
+room when they got excited,--and Mr. Barker popped out of the room in
+a hurry. He was pretending to laugh but I could see that he was some
+scared inside. And I don't blame him. When Diavolo looked at you, you
+didn't want to say that your soul was your own unless he gave you
+leave."
+
+"Did he ever look at you?" I asked curiously.
+
+She tossed her saucy head. "That's different! No, he didn't try any of
+his hypnotizing tricks on me."
+
+"Did you see any signs of bad feeling between them afterwards? Was
+there any more quarrelling?"
+
+"Not that I heard. I guess the little man knew better."
+
+"Which one do you mean by the little man?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Barker, of course. Not that he _was_ much smaller than Mr.
+Diavolo if you weighed them, perhaps, but you know what I mean. Mr.
+Barker made me think of the man showing off the tiger at the circus.
+You could see that for all his show of not being afraid, he didn't
+dare turn his back for a minute."
+
+That remark seemed to me to express the situation very vividly, and I
+had no doubt that her native shrewdness had correctly grasped the
+relation between the two men. And her positive testimony that Diavolo
+had threatened to kill Barker if the latter divulged his identity was
+certainly significant. Was it not most probable that that was what had
+happened later? How Eugene Benbow had become involved in the fatal
+affair I could not even guess.
+
+After my interviews with the manager and the landlady's daughter, I
+seemed to have sucked Oakdale dry so far as information concerning
+Diavolo went. But instead of returning at once to Saintsbury, I
+determined to run on to Houston. I wanted to go over the records of
+Clyde's trial there, with a view to seeing whether there was any flaw
+or technicality of which it might be possible to take advantage. Clyde
+was probably fleeing the country as fast as he could make his way by
+the Underground, but there was always the possibility that his affairs
+might be brought to a sudden climax.
+
+I thought that the critical moment had arrived with unceremonious
+haste when, after registering in a Houston hotel, I looked up and saw
+Clyde himself crossing the lobby to take the elevator. For a moment I
+hesitated whether to accost him or not, but he saw me and at once
+turned back and came over.
+
+"Hello! You here?" he said easily. "Come on up to my room, if you
+aren't busy."
+
+"All right," I responded, making an effort to match his casual manner.
+
+When we reached his room, I saw that despite his self-possession he
+looked harassed and worn. The long inner strain had suddenly come to
+the surface.
+
+"You didn't come for me?" he asked nervously as we shook hands.
+
+"Certainly not. I had no idea that you would be so rash, to use no
+stronger word, as to come here."
+
+He threw out his hands with a helpless gesture.
+
+"I couldn't help it. It seemed all along as though I _must_ be able to
+find some evidence in my favor if I came myself. I didn't dare to come
+before, for fear of a chance recognition, but now that the danger had
+appeared, I was driven to taking chances."
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+"Twenty-four hours."
+
+"You are lucky to have remained undetected so long. Now I hope you'll
+stay in your room till night and then get away as quickly and quietly
+as possible."
+
+"There's nothing else to do," he said heavily. "I have been to Lester.
+The places are all changed and the people are new. Everything has
+passed away--except the official record of the trial and the
+sentence."
+
+"Of course it would all be changed," I said, as lightly as possible.
+"But I am going to examine the account of the trial and see if there
+was anything in the procedure which will give us a loophole. But you
+mustn't stay here to complicate matters. You must get away,--as I have
+told you before."
+
+He did not answer for a moment, but sat with bent head. Then he spoke
+slowly.
+
+"I wonder if life would be worth having on the terms you suggest.
+Expatriation, separation from everything that you care for, everyone
+who makes your public, from all your associations and ambitions,--"
+
+"You could establish new associations. You would see life from a
+different angle, and that is no small advantage. And--pardon me--you
+would not need to go alone."
+
+He looked up swiftly at that. "Never! Do you think that I would
+let--_anyone_ make so mad a choice?--dower her with such a life as I
+must live henceforward, dodging in the shadows, afraid of hearing my
+own name, an outlaw and a skulker? If I regard life for myself as of
+dubious value under such conditions, do you think I am so hopelessly
+mean as to ask anyone to share it with me?"
+
+Of course I could understand his point of view, though he looked so
+handsome as he repudiated the idea that I guessed Miss Thurston would
+not have regarded the lot as wholly forlorn.
+
+"No," he said, walking restlessly up and down the narrow room, "I'll
+take my medicine, but I won't involve anyone else. I'll make as good a
+fight as I can, and I won't skulk,--"
+
+He was interrupted. There was a tap at the door, and immediately it
+was opened and a police officer stepped inside. He glanced from me to
+Clyde and picked his man unerringly.
+
+"Mr. Clyde, I presume?"
+
+Clyde nodded. "Yes. You want me?"
+
+"Yes, sir,"--deprecatingly.
+
+"You mean I am to go with you now?"
+
+"Yes, sir,"--firmly.
+
+Clyde smiled at me wryly. "I suppose I ought to know something of the
+etiquette of these affairs, but I am afraid I am not up. How about my
+personal papers? Will I be allowed to turn them over to you?"
+
+"Certainly, unless the officer has a warrant for them," I said, with
+an assured air, intended to impress the officer.
+
+Clyde took from an inner pocket a packet of letters, old and worn.
+"These are the letters that took me back from Lester," he said with a
+smile. "They were in the bag which I had left in my room at Houston.
+That was the only reason I went back that morning. If--well, if the
+time should come when you think best, give them to K. T., and tell her
+that I have carried them always. She will understand then,--"
+
+"I will not fail," I said, much moved. So it had been Katherine
+Thurston all the time! "And that reminds me that I have here a letter
+which Miss Benbow charged me to give you,--an old letter written by
+her father. She thought you might care to keep it. Perhaps, under the
+circumstances, you'd better read it and then return it to me for safe
+keeping."
+
+"I remember Senator Benbow very well,--a fine man!" Clyde said. He
+spoke absently, and I guessed that his mind was on other matters, but
+I had no intention of letting him disregard Jean's remembrance, or of
+letting the letter which she had treasured go into the hands of any
+careless court official.
+
+"It concerns you, she said. Read it, and then I will take charge of
+it."
+
+I handed him the old letter in its faded envelope, and turned to speak
+to the officer while Clyde should read it. The detective had watched
+us closely, but so long as Clyde made no move to leave the room--or to
+draw a revolver--he showed no disposition to interfere with our
+arrangements.
+
+"How did you get information about him?" I asked the officer, merely
+to leave Clyde to himself for a moment.
+
+"From Saintsbury. The police there are looking for him, and they wired
+us to be on the lookout."
+
+"Then you agree with Jerome's theory that the villain always returns
+to the scene of his crime in the last act?" I said.
+
+"Jerome? Does he say that?" The man looked puzzled. "Well, maybe he
+has found it so in New York. But I don't quite know what you mean by
+the last act."
+
+A faint sound from Clyde made me turn. He was standing, supporting
+himself against the table, with a face so marked by emotion that I was
+startled into a cry. Whether his emotion was terror or joy or merely
+awe, I could not tell from his look, his face was so curiously
+changed. He held out to me the letter which he had been reading, and
+when I took it he dropped into the chair by the table and let his head
+fall upon his arm. I felt that it was the unconscious attitude of
+prayer, and I unfolded the letter with more anxiety than I can
+express. This is what I read:
+
+
+"ON THE TRAIN, NEAR LESTER, TEXAS,
+     "August 30th, 1895."
+
+"My Dear Love:--Midnight has just blown across the sky, and here is
+the thirtieth,--the day for which I always stay awake so that I may
+send you a birthday greeting on the very first minute of time that has
+a right to carry it. I am throwing a kiss in your direction now, and
+if you are not conscious of it this minute, you will know when you
+receive this missive that although your devoted husband was traveling
+(and dead tired) he waited awake for the express purpose of saying
+'Happy Birthday' to you into space.
+
+"I left Houston an hour ago on my way to St. Louis, and we have just
+passed Lester, a little way station and our first stop. Whom do you
+think I saw there, of all persons in the world? Kenneth Clyde! I
+didn't know that he was in this part of the country, and I can't
+imagine what he could want of Lester, which, to judge from what I saw
+of it, consists of a platform, a freight shed, and three houses. He
+evidently had come up from Houston on my train, though I didn't know
+it until I saw him jump off at Lester and rush for the station agent,
+who was lounging by the shed. Whatever he wanted he didn't get it, for
+he was rowing the agent so hard that he didn't see or hear me, though
+I hallooed to him. I suspect that he found he had got on the wrong
+train by mistake and wanted to get back. If so, he will have to wait
+until morning, when the local comes along,--long enough to cool his
+fit of temper. I like Kenneth and believe he has the makings of a man
+in him, for all that he is somewhat unbroken. If I ever have a chance
+to hold out a helping hand to the boy, I'll certainly do it.
+
+"I'll be home in a fortnight, and I count the days until I shall see
+you, my own. Kiss the two ingenious Gene-iuses for their dad. JOE."
+
+
+I caught Clyde's hand and wrung it. "It's a miracle! That is, it is
+the new evidence which will give us a chance to re-open the case. And
+it is conclusive. Man, there could never have been anything more
+complete. And to come now, at this moment!"
+
+"It is the helping hand that he offered," Clyde said, with an unsteady
+laugh. "And little Jean sent it to me, you say?"
+
+"Yes. She had been looking over some old mementoes of her father, and
+she merely thought this letter might interest you because you were
+mentioned in it."
+
+The officer apparently thought we were taking too much time mooning
+over old family letters. "If you are ready, Mr. Clyde,--"
+ he suggested courteously.
+
+"Yes, all right. I'm ready. You will take the necessary steps,
+Hilton?"
+
+"Of course. I can't at this moment think of anything that would give
+me more pleasure. I'll go down with you at once."
+
+But I didn't. As we stepped into the hall, a boy with a telegram came
+toward me. It was a forwarded message from Oakdale, where they had
+failed to find me:
+
+"Come back to onct. There is a trouble on the girl. BARNEY."
+
+
+"He means Jean," I exclaimed, handing the slip to Clyde. "I know he
+means Jean. Confound him for not being more explicit. What can have
+happened?"
+
+"You'll go at once, of course?" said Clyde promptly.
+
+"I can't go till a train starts." And then I remembered how my going
+would affect Clyde. "I'll have time to lay this letter of yours before
+the court before I go, in any event. And I shouldn't want to take any
+chances of a train wreck with that document in my pocket."
+
+But you can imagine the fever I was in till I could get off. I saw the
+proper officials and took the necessary steps to secure judicial
+recognition of the important paper which was to restore Clyde's life,
+liberty, and happiness, and though he could not, of course, be
+released at a moment's notice, I had the satisfaction of seeing the
+procedure started that would enable him in a short time to face the
+world a free man, with the secret terror that had shadowed his life
+for fifteen years forever laid. But I went through it all like a man
+in a dream. Through all that was said and done I was hearing every
+moment, like a persistent cry,--
+
+"Come back at once! Jeans needs you,--Jean needs you!"
+
+After leaving the court house I still had hours--ages!--to wait at the
+station, and the pictures my imagination conjured up were not soothing
+company. I had telegraphed Barney that I was coming, but after that I
+could do nothing but fret myself to a fever waiting. I got off,
+finally, but all through the night and all the next day the singing
+wheels of the train were beating out the refrain,--
+
+"She _needs_ me! She _needs_ me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+A RESCUE
+
+
+I had rather expected that when I reached Saintsbury, Barney would be
+on hand to give an explanation of his urgent message, but no Barney
+was to be seen. I took a taxi to my office, which was across the
+street from Barney's stand. For the first time within my memory,
+Barney's stand was shut up and the owner gone. I told the chauffeur to
+wait and went up to my office. Perhaps Fellows could throw some light
+on things,--unless he too had disappeared.
+
+Someone was there. I heard talking before I entered,--the loud and
+unfamiliar tones of a man's voice. I went in without knocking. Fellows
+was there, at my desk. His start of surprise turned into unmistakable
+confusion as he saw me. His own chair was occupied by a pretty girl,
+whom I recognized at once as Minnie Doty, the houseworker at Mr.
+Ellison's, and the girl whom I had seen with Fellows in the park. The
+third person in the room was a tall man who stood before the window,
+hat in hand. Evidently he was the man whose voice I had heard.
+
+"Well, I must be going," he said now after a moment's awkward pause,
+and moved toward the door. As he turned from the window the light fell
+upon his shaven jaw, blue-black under the skin, and I recognized him.
+He was the man Barker had addressed with a taunting question about his
+marriage.
+
+"Don't leave the room," I said quietly, keeping my position before the
+door. "Fellows, introduce me."
+
+A gleam of amusement crossed Fellows' sardonic countenance. Leaning
+against the edge of my desk, he indicated the seated girl with a
+slight gesture. "Mr. Hilton, allow me to present you to Mrs. Alfred
+Barker!"
+
+"How do you do?" the girl said nervously, trying to rise to the social
+requirements of the occasion.
+
+"How long have you known this fact, Fellows?" I asked, watching him
+closely.
+
+"For some time," he said easily. "Miss Doty--Mary Doherty her name was
+originally, but she changed it to Minnie Doty when she ran away from
+her husband and got a position as houseworker at Mr. Ellison's--she
+answered our advertisement for Mary Doherty, to learn something to her
+advantage. I talked with her,--she didn't want to be known as Barker's
+wife or in any way connected with the inquest, so I agreed to keep her
+secret for a short time, because--"
+
+"Because she was afraid this man, whose name I don't know,--"
+
+"It's Timothy Royce, and I'm in the fire department. Anything else you
+would like to know?" the tall man threw in defiantly.
+
+"Yes. I'd like to know if it was you who telephoned to Miss Doty,
+early in the morning after Barker was killed, 'Barker is dead and now
+you must marry me.' Was that you?"
+
+"Oh, Tim!" cried Miss Doty,--or whatever she preferred to be called.
+"Oh, Tim, I knew they would find it out!"
+
+"What of it?" said Royce doggedly. "Anybody is welcome to know that I
+want to marry you."
+
+"I see. And when Barker asked you in the hall that day if you were
+married yet, and you drew back to hit him,--"
+
+"It was his devilishness," said Royce concisely. "He had just spotted
+Min and me, and he knew well enough I couldn't marry while he was
+above ground, and he was rubbing it in. That night that he was killed,
+Min and I had gone out to talk things over. I wanted her to run away
+with me, but she said she couldn't while he was alive, and the next
+morning, when the patrolman on our beat told me Barker was dead, I
+tried to telephone Min. I couldn't go to her, because I was on duty. I
+knew it would break her up, being a woman, even though he was ugly as
+sin to her. Women are that way, I suppose. She even saw about getting
+him buried. But she was scairt to death of having to come forward and
+tell things and be talked about and have to appear at the inquest and
+all that, and letting it be known about her and me,--
+
+"Where were you the night that Barker was killed?" I asked abruptly.
+The man looked honest, there was an honest ring in his voice,--but
+suppose that after all I had the real murderer here in my office,
+covering his trail with palaver? Fellows' eyes were on the floor.
+
+"We went out to Lake Park on the electric, Min and me," he answered
+promptly. And then he added unnecessarily, "We went out on the seven
+o'clock car and stayed there all evening."
+
+"Now I know you are lying," I said coolly. "Minnie was at home a few
+minutes before seven. I saw her let Miss Benbow in."
+
+"There's a lie somewhere, but I'm not fathering it," Royce retorted
+hotly. "Miss Benbow was waiting in the back entry to be let in when we
+got there, and it was nearer three than two, because the power gave
+out and we were tied up for over two hours half way between here and
+the Park, waiting every minute to go on."
+
+"Good heavens! Was Miss Benbow waiting outside till three in the
+morning?"
+
+"Not outside,--in the back entry. It seems that she came home
+unexpected, and finding the house shut up, she waited, thinking of
+course Min would come home some time. And so she did. You see,
+everybody was away from home that evening, so Minnie was free. But
+Miss Benbow is a good sort all right. When Min said she'd lose her
+place if Mrs. Crosswell found out about her going off, Miss Benbow
+said right off that she wouldn't tell."
+
+I held down any adequate expression of my feelings. I merely asked,
+"What sort of a place is the back entry?"
+
+"Oh, it was quite clean and nice," Minnie spoke up from the depths of
+her handkerchief. "There's an old rocking chair that I sit in to peel
+potatoes and things like that. She went to sleep in the old chair and
+didn't come to no harm. We leave the entry unlocked so that the iceman
+can get at the refrigerator in the morning."
+
+The thought of Jean cooped up in that dark back entry until three in
+the morning, even admitting the comfort of the old rocking chair, was
+sufficiently disturbing, but aside from that there was something
+perplexing about the story. Somehow it did not fit in with my previous
+idea of the events of that night. I struggled to fix the discrepancy.
+
+"How about Mr. Benbow?" I asked Minnie suddenly. "You told me you saw
+him leave the house."
+
+"I did!"
+
+"When? If you were away from the house before seven,--"
+
+"It was just as I was taking Min back home,--a little before three,"
+Royce interrupted. "Just as we were going along the side of the house,
+past the room Min said was the library, the door opened, and Mr.
+Benbow came out and ran down the steps. Min didn't want him to see
+her, so we stood still in the shadow till he was in the street. Then
+we went on to the back of the house."
+
+"You gave me to understand that it was earlier in the evening," I said
+reproachfully.
+
+"I didn't say when," she murmured miserably. "And I couldn't tell you
+it was at three o'clock, or it would all have come out! And it is
+nobody's business, anyhow. I wish I had never answered that
+advertisement of yours!"
+
+Fellows stirred slightly and his eye met mine. I caught his hint not
+to frighten the timid Minnie if I wanted to get any information from
+her.
+
+"Did you tell Miss Benbow that you had seen her brother leave the
+house at three?" I asked, to fill time.
+
+"Not then," she said meekly. "I didn't think about it. I told her the
+other day."
+
+"Well, now you know the whole story, and I guess Min and I will go,"
+said Royce,--and this time I did not try to prevent his departure.
+"Min wanted me to come, because that young man was hanging around to
+make her tell about things, and she didn't know what she had ought to
+tell and what not. But there ain't nothing we need to be afraid of
+coming out, only Min hates to be in the papers."
+
+"Good day," I said. "And thank you for coming." As the door closed
+behind them, I turned to Fellows.
+
+"Follow them. Don't lose sight of him. I don't feel sure yet that he
+has told the truth. We may need him."
+
+"All right," said Fellows. "I've been having her watched for weeks to
+find out who her young man was. I just worked it out yesterday, and
+got them here five minutes before you came in."
+
+"Well, make sure that we can locate him if necessary," I said. This
+was not the time to discuss his method of handling things.
+
+The door had hardly swung shut behind him when it opened again and
+Barney stumped in,--an anxious-looking Barney.
+
+"You're here! I missed you," he said.
+
+"Barney, what is it?" I cried. To wait for him to put what he had to
+say into words seemed suddenly next to impossible.
+
+"I don't know wot it is, sir, but it's trouble," he said doggedly.
+"She guv me a letter for ye, and here it is."
+
+I tore it open, and behind the incoherent words I seemed to hear
+Jean's serious, appealing voice:
+
+"DEAR MR. HILTON:--I just must write to you, because I couldn't bear
+it if you should ever think back and feel hurt because I hadn't. I
+can't tell you all about it, but I want you to remember that I have a
+reason, a very important reason, for what I am going to do. I can't
+explain, but it is on account of Gene. You will know afterwards what I
+mean.
+
+"But there is one other thing I want to tell you. I have just found
+out that Minnie told you she saw Gene leave the house that night, as
+she was coming in. That is a mistake,--I didn't tell her so, because I
+didn't know what difference it might make. But Gene was fast asleep on
+the couch in the library when Minnie and I came into the house (and
+that was three o'clock) so if she saw someone going off by the side
+door just before, it wasn't Gene. You see, it was this way. When I ran
+back to speak to the girl I thought was Minnie, I found it wasn't
+Minnie but a friend of hers who works in the next house, and she said
+Minnie had gone out but would be right back, so I went into the back
+entry and waited for her, because I wouldn't go to Mrs. Whyte's when
+she was having a party. And Minnie didn't come till three. When we got
+in I saw a light in the library, and I went in, and there was Gene
+asleep. I kissed him very softly but I didn't wake him up, because you
+know how boys are, wanting their sisters to be so awfully dignified.
+And though I was perfectly safe and comfortable waiting beside the
+refrigerator, it wasn't exactly dignified, and Minnie was scared to
+death about being found out. So I didn't wake Gene. And it has been a
+great comfort ever since to me to remember how peaceful he looked,
+because that shows he felt innocent in his mind and not with a guilty
+conscience to keep him awake like Lady Macbeth.
+
+"I can't say anything more, because I have promised over and over
+again not to say a thing about the plan to save Gene, but I will just
+say this,--If you should happen to hear that I was married, will you
+please, _please_ understand and believe that it was to help Gene, and
+that of course I must do anything for him.
+
+"Yours faithfully" (a blot made it look like "tearfully"),
+
+     "JEAN BENBOW."
+
+
+It was incoherent enough (except for the part about Gene, which
+I put aside in my mind to think out later,) but one thing seemed
+clear,--that she was married or about to be married, and that she had
+been lured into this madness by some delusion that in this way she was
+going to be able to help her brother. I glanced at the envelope. It
+had not been through the mails.
+
+"When and where did you get this, Barney?"
+
+"Yisterday, yer honor. She brought it to me herself. An' she wanted to
+bind me by great oaths out of a book that I wouldn't give it to you
+till afther to-day had gone by. Sez I, How can I give it to him till
+he comes here, an' his office man sez he won't be here for a week
+yet,--for I had been to find out on my own account,--God forgive me
+for deceivin' the innocent."
+
+"It wasn't her letter, then, that made you telegraph, if you only got
+it yesterday. Was there anything else?"
+
+His eyes fell, and he shifted his weight on his crutch uneasily.
+
+"I saw her cryin' and I knew she was carryin' sorrow," he said at
+last, defiantly.
+
+"When? Where? Tell me everything, can't you? Did you know anything of
+her plan to be married? Do you know where she is?"
+
+"I know only what I see,--an' that was that she was unhappy. It was
+this way. She came by my stand many a time, asking this about you and
+that about you, an' when would you be back, an' I cud see that there
+was more on her heart than a gurrul like her should be carryin'. Then
+one night I saw her cryin',--"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"'Twas in her own home, sure. Her head was down on the windy-sill, an'
+it was dark, and she never mistrusted there was anybody about the
+place watchin',--an' no more there was, seein' I wouldn't count an old
+codger like meself anybody. She was sobbin' and talkin' aloud to
+herself,--" He broke off and looked at me with fierce reproach. "I
+telegraphed for ye then, sor."
+
+"And I came at once. Then this letter,--she brought you this
+yesterday?"
+
+"That was it. An' if you hadn't come by this train, sor, I would have
+opened it meself." He looked at me defiantly.
+
+"She says here--at least, I think she means to say, that she is going
+to be married,--and in mad foolishness. Wait till I see what I can
+learn by telephone."
+
+I got Mr. Ellison's house first. Mrs. Crosswell, who answered, was
+sure that Miss Benbow was not at home, but did not have any idea where
+she was. Did not know whether she had taken anything with her when she
+left the house or not. I then called up Mrs. Whyte, explained that a
+letter from Jean suggested a possible elopement, and begged her to go
+over and see if she could find out where Jean went, when she left the
+house, and whether she had taken any things that would indicate a
+contemplated permanent departure. I then took my head in my hands and
+thought, holding down the terror that surged up every other moment and
+almost made thinking impossible. "If you hear that I am married," she
+had said. Was it Garney? Never mind. Garney or anyone else, people
+could not be married without certain preliminaries, without leaving
+certain records. There must have been a license. I took Barney with me
+in the cab, and we whirled up to the court house.
+
+"Have you any record of issuing a marriage license for Jean Benbow
+within the last few days?" I demanded of the clerk.
+
+Why has the Lord made so many stupid people? My question had to be
+handed on from one clerk to another and record after record after
+record examined,--and here every wasted minute was wearing away this
+"day," this critical day, over which Jean had wished her secret to be
+kept. I held my watch in my hand while they searched. At last they
+found it.
+
+"Looks like Jack put this memorandum where it wouldn't be found too
+easy," the successful searcher said significantly to his fuming
+superior.
+
+It was quite possible,--for the memorandum showed the issue of a
+license for the marriage of Allen King Garney and Jean Benbow, and it
+was dated the day before. She had stipulated with Barney that I should
+not receive her letter till after to-day, which meant that this was
+_the_ day. And here it was drawing toward five o'clock.
+
+Then, out of the intense anxiety which fused all thought and feeling
+into one passionate will to save her, came the inspiration. She had
+said, on that drive when I took her and old William Jordan out into
+the country, that if ever she were married it would be _there_, in the
+vine-covered church of the old suburb where her mother had stood a
+bride. The recollection was almost like a voice,--"Don't you
+remember?" I did,--oh, I did! Every word, every look. My hand was
+shaking as I turned the pages of the city directory, trying to
+identify the church which I knew only by its location, and to discover
+the name of its minister. Then I turned again to the telephone. There
+was no connection with the church, but I succeeded at last in getting
+the minister's house.
+
+"No, Mr. Arnold is not at home," a gentle feminine voice answered. "He
+has gone to the church to perform a marriage ceremony."
+
+"Can you catch him?--stop him? Is it too late?" I cried desperately
+over the wire.
+
+"Oh, the wedding was at four o'clock," the shocked voice answered.
+"Oh, is there anything wrong? I am sure Henry didn't know,--we thought
+it so romantic, a secret wedding,--" I hung up the receiver regardless
+of her emotions and went back to my cab on the run, while the
+listening office force enjoyed the sensation.
+
+"Go to the little church at the corner of Olympia and Hazel Streets,"
+I said to the chauffeur, "and get there as soon as you can without
+being arrested. _Get_ there."
+
+Then I told Barney what I had discovered. There was no reasonable
+ground for supposing that I would be in time to prevent disaster, yet
+I must go on, even against reason. And surely Providence would
+interfere to save her! I could so easily understand how she had been
+misled. Garney had made her believe that he could help Gene. Perhaps
+he had suggested that I was not giving the case proper attention. He
+had offered some impossible assistance if she would marry him, and
+she, with her romantic, schoolgirlish, unreal ideas of the way things
+were done in the world, had consented all the more readily because it
+involved a sacrifice on her part.
+
+The cab swung up to the curb, I jumped up the church steps, and pushed
+my way through the swinging baize doors. The room was dim, but I could
+see a group of three before the altar,--Garney, yes; and the minister;
+and Jean. They turned to look as I stormed down the aisle, and moved
+slightly apart. I caught Jean's hands in mine and looked into her
+eyes.
+
+"Jean! Are you married?"
+
+A mist of tears dimmed the brightness of her eyes. "Oh, I'm _glad_
+you've come," she said, quiveringly.
+
+Still holding her hands I turned to the minister. "Have you married
+these two, sir?"
+
+"Not yet. The young lady appears to have been detained,--"
+
+"I took the wrong car! I was just explaining,--"
+
+For a moment the room swam before my eyes. I was in time!
+
+"It was just an accident," Jean was saying. "Then when I found I was
+wrong, I came back as soon as possible and--now I am ready!"
+
+"Ready!" I crushed her hands until she drew them away with a
+little gasp. I turned impatiently to Garney, who stood motionless,
+white-faced, watching her. Of course he knew the game was up, but he
+did not move.
+
+"Go!" I said. "I'll settle with you later."
+
+I don't know whether he heard me. His eyes were fixed upon Jean with
+mingled anger, longing, and despair.
+
+"You waited till he should come! You left word for him to follow you!"
+he said pantingly. "In spite of your promises, you never meant to keep
+your word. You do not care about your brother. You thought you could
+trick me--"
+
+"Oh, no, no!" she cried, breaking from me and going to him with hands
+extended. "I am here! I am ready. I will marry you now,--"
+
+"Jean!" I cried.
+
+"You don't understand," she said, turning breathlessly to me. "He is
+going to help us save Gene. He knows something,--he said he would tell
+me if we were married,--"
+
+"Nonsense. It was a trick. If Mr. Garney has any information that will
+benefit your brother,--"
+
+"He might hand it over to you, I suppose!" Garney said with a sneer.
+"Very well, I will. Investigate that ex-convict that you keep in your
+office. You may find something that will be of interest. But if you
+hadn't come--" He moistened his dry lips, then turned abruptly and
+walked up the aisle. I saw that he tried to hurry, but he walked
+unsteadily and steadied himself by the pews. I once saw a gambler who
+had staked everything on a desperate game, and lost, stagger like that
+from the room.
+
+"What did he mean about an ex-convict?" Jean asked in a shocked voice.
+"Not Mr. Fellows? And what would he have to do with it?"
+
+"Nothing," I said promptly, putting certain uncomfortable
+recollections out of my mind. "Don't you see that Mr. Garney was
+merely deceiving you? He had nothing to tell, no help to give you. He
+merely wanted to marry you. Jean, Jean! How could you do so mad a
+thing?"
+
+"For Gene!" she said reproachfully. "Why, I'd do anything. And Mr.
+Garney said he surely would tell me when we were married, and if I
+cared for Gene I would do it. He wouldn't tell me beforehand, because
+he--he doesn't like you!" She dropped her eyes in delicious confusion.
+"You see, he is--_jealous_ of you! He didn't want me to wear this!"
+She touched the locket she wore on a chain about her neck,--the locket
+I had given her just before leaving Saintsbury.
+
+"How did he know I had given you the locket?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know. He just guessed." She looked shy and conscious--and
+charming. But something puzzled me.
+
+"You didn't tell him? You are sure of that?"
+
+"Why, yes," she said, looking surprised. "I never told anybody. Not
+anybody at all. It was a kind of a--secret."
+
+How do ideas come to us? I thought I was wholly absorbed in Jean, and
+was conscious merely of a desire to soothe and calm her by taking
+things naturally, but now something seemed to nudge my attention and
+to urge, "Don't you see what that means? Don't you see? Don't you
+see?"
+
+I did see--in a flash. That locket! It had not been out of my locked
+desk until I gave it to Jean, except once,--the night of Barker's
+murder. I had taken it to Mrs. Whyte's that evening, and had shown the
+portrait to Miss Thurston for a minute. I was sure she had not even
+seen the outside of the case, which was out of my hand but a moment.
+But later that evening, while I sat in Barker's office waiting, I had
+taken the locket from my pocket and had sat under the gaslight
+examining it--in full view of the concealed murderer who had watched
+me from the dark inner room, and who, a few minutes later, shot Barker
+from that same concealment. The whole thing flashed before my mind.
+
+"Wait here," I said, and dashed for the door by which Garney had left.
+He was a block away, evidently waiting for a street car which I could
+see approaching.
+
+"Take me down to that car," I said to the chauffeur, and we were off
+at the word. Barney was still in the cab. "You go back with the cab,
+Barney, and take Miss Benbow home. I must see Garney before he gets
+away."
+
+We reached the street just as the car, which had halted to take on
+Garney, started up again. I sprang from the step of the cab to the
+rear platform of the car. Garney turned and looked at me with surprise
+that changed quickly to anger.
+
+"Are you following me?" he demanded under his breath.
+
+"I told you we should have to have a settlement."
+
+"Settle what? You've won," he said, with a shrug. He went inside,
+while I remained on the platform, thinking out a plan of action. When
+the conductor came for my fare I said a few words to him. He looked
+amazed.
+
+"When we pass a policeman, slow up a bit," I continued. "If the man
+tries to get off before we pick up an officer, help me stop him.
+That's all."
+
+We swung around a corner, saw a policeman standing outside the
+curb,--and the car stopped without signal. I jumped off and explained
+the situation to him in a word. He at once boarded the waiting car
+with me and approached the unconscious Garney.
+
+"You're wanted," he said quietly.
+
+Garney rose, furious but also frightened. He looked at me.
+
+"What damn foolishness is this?" he said, trying to bluster. "I
+haven't time for any nonsense. I have to catch a train. I'm going
+away."
+
+"Come on, and don't make a disturbance," the officer said.
+
+"But I tell you it is a mistake. You'll suffer for it. It is not a
+criminal offense to try to get married."
+
+"Perhaps not," I said, taking the word from the police officer without
+warrant. "You are under arrest because I charge you with the murder of
+Alfred Barker."
+
+I never saw a man faint before. He crumpled up like a collapsed
+balloon. We lifted him to the sidewalk so that the car could go on,
+and the patrolman called up the wagon. But before Garney came back to
+consciousness, I had lifted the moustached lip that masked his narrow
+jaw. The crowded teeth were pushed out on each side to form a V,
+exactly like the model made from the apple bitten in Barker's office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+CARDS ON THE TABLE
+
+
+The crowd dispersed as the patrol wagon took Garney and the officer
+away, but one man lingered and fell into step with me as I turned
+away. It was Mr. Ellison. I had not noticed him in the crowd.
+
+"What's all this?" he asked, twisting his head to look up at me,
+bird-fashion.
+
+"Walk with me, and I'll tell you," I said. "I am going down to see
+Benbow."
+
+And as we walked I told him of the surprising developments of the last
+few hours,--that Garney, the Latin tutor, and Gene's friend, was the
+man with crooked teeth who had been eating apples in Barker's inner
+office while waiting for his victim, who had observed and recognized
+my locket; and that Garney was Diavolo the hypnotist who had
+threatened to kill his partner, Barker, if his identity were
+disclosed. (I may say here, to anticipate events which befell later,
+that this identity was absolutely established by Dr. Shaw, the dentist
+who had extracted a tooth for Diavolo,--the first case in the law
+reports, I believe, where identity was established by the teeth. By
+that time every link was so clear that Garney's confession was hardly
+needed,--though he did break down in the end and make a plea of
+"Guilty.")
+
+Ellison listened with his peculiar interest,--an interest in events
+rather than in persons, and in ideas more than either. At the end he
+nodded his alert head rapidly.
+
+"Yes, I knew Garney had practised hypnotism but I thought it was years
+ago. Barker told me, in strict confidence."
+
+"Barker!"
+
+He nodded. "Yes. I didn't say anything about it, because people seemed
+to think it wasn't good form for me to have any civil relations with
+the man who had killed my second cousin, but as a matter of fact, I
+knew him fairly well. Gene would turn white at the mention of his
+name, so I didn't mention it. That check for $250--you remember?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, that was to pay for a course of lessons in hypnotism. He
+promised to get me a practical teacher who had been a public
+performer,--Garney, in fact. He hadn't made the arrangements yet, but
+he was confident that he could bring it about. And I was eager to have
+the opportunity to investigate the matter, scientifically, you
+understand. If he could teach me how to do it, I would understand the
+thing,--the rationale of it, I mean. But it was strictly confidential,
+because of Garney's position in the university."
+
+"Did he know you knew?"
+
+"No. Barker was killed before he could arrange it. I went to his room
+the next day, to see if I could by chance recover that check, which
+hadn't been presented at the bank, but his dragon landlady gave me no
+chance,--and then you told me that you saw it in his pocket the next
+day. So I let things take their own course."
+
+"Somebody did break into his rooms that night," I said. "That has
+never been cleared up."
+
+"Garney!" said Ellison, shrewdly. "He has in his possession certain
+books which I know Barker had in his room the day before. He
+undoubtedly removed them, with any papers or other matters that might
+have connected him with Barker or revealed his practices."
+
+"How do you know he has them?" I asked, amazed.
+
+"Oh, I have made a point of seeing a good deal of Garney lately. You
+see, I am interested in the occult, scientifically. And since Barker
+couldn't act as go-between, I have been cultivating Garney on my own
+account."
+
+"Yes, and given him a chance to work on Miss Benbow's feelings," I
+groaned.
+
+"Why, it never occurred to me that he was interested in her," he said
+blandly.
+
+"That was too obvious to attract your attention, doubtless," I could
+not refrain from saying. "Well, you have cleared up a good many
+points, Mr. Ellison, but I'd like to ask another question. Did you
+send a thousand dollars to William Jordan, and if so, why?"
+
+For the first time he looked embarrassed.
+
+"Why yes," he said, nodding his head deliberately. "Jean told me about
+him and his loss. It struck me that it was an unnecessary piece of
+hard luck that he should suffer as an individual for an advancement of
+knowledge which will benefit the race. He didn't care anything about
+hypnotism scientifically. I did. I had fostered its development, so
+far as lay within my power. So, in a manner, I was responsible for his
+loss. Not immediately, of course, and yet not so remotely, either,
+since I was encouraging Barker. At any rate, I felt that I should be
+more comfortable if I made it up to the old farmer. When hypnotism is
+no longer a mystery but an understood science, such things won't
+happen!" He beamed with enthusiasm, and I saw that I had never
+understood the man. He was an idealist.
+
+"I hope they won't," I said doubtfully. "But hypnotism seems to me
+devil's work, both for the hypnotizer and the victim. Think of Jordan,
+and look at Garney. Aside from his crimes, the man is somehow
+abnormal. He has the look of a haunted man. He faints like a woman
+when he is discovered. No, no hypnotism for me, thank you. But in any
+event, your action in reimbursing poor old Jordan does you credit."
+
+He waved that aside. "What I should like to know," he said, changing
+the subject, "is how Gene became involved in this affair. If Garney
+shot Barker, why did Gene say he did? He isn't as fond of Garney as
+all that. You don't suppose--" He stopped suddenly and looked at me
+hard. "You don't suppose that Garney hypnotized him, _and sent him to
+shoot Barker?_ That would be neat! Damnable, of course, but damnably
+neat!"
+
+"I don't know," I said slowly. I had been afraid to face that idea
+myself. "I am going to see him now. Perhaps, with the news of Garney's
+arrest for a lever, I may get the truth from him. If you don't mind, I
+want to see him alone."
+
+"All right. I'll leave you here."
+
+But as he turned away, Fellows came up from behind and fell into step
+with me. I think he had been watching for the chance.
+
+"Royce's story is all right, Mr. Hilton," he said. "The cars _were_
+tied up on the Park line the night that Barker was shot. And I have
+seen the conductor. He knows Royce, who is a fireman at Engine House
+No. 6, and he remembers seeing him on the stalled car, with a girl."
+
+"A good alibi, but he won't need to prove it now," I said. "We have
+found Barker's murderer. It is a man named Allen Garney."
+
+"Oh, ho!" Fellows exclaimed, in obvious surprise.
+
+"Do you know him?" I asked, recalling the damaging charge which Garney
+had made against Fellows.
+
+"I know who he is, and I know that there was something between him and
+Barker in the old days,--on the quiet. Garney didn't care to be seen
+with him, but in a way they were pals. In fact, I went to see him the
+other day to make some inquiries about Barker's past. He was rather
+rude in getting rid of me."
+
+"You frightened him. He didn't want to be identified as having any
+connection with Barker. I see. That's why he used your name as a
+scapegoat to turn my attention from himself. He suggested that you
+might have shot Barker yourself, Fellows!"
+
+"Did he?" said Fellows, grimly. "Well, if I had, it would only have
+been the execution of justice. Barker was a murderer."
+
+"You mean in killing Senator Benbow?"
+
+"More than that. Do you remember the story that the Samovar printed
+about Mr. Clyde?"
+
+"Well, rather!"
+
+"It brought to my mind a story that Barker once told me. When I was a
+fresh kid from the country and he was teaching me the ways of the
+world and of the race-track, he told me that he had once stabbed a man
+in a Texas hotel for cheating at cards. He said that he and three
+other men were playing in the room of one of them, and that was the
+one that was killed. He told me that another man was arrested, tried
+and convicted, while he sat in the court room and watched the
+proceedings."
+
+"What a monster!"
+
+"He told the story merely to point out that every man had to take his
+chances,--good luck or bad,--just as it came. He was a great believer
+in luck. It was his luck to escape and the other man's luck to be
+convicted by mistake. But he said that the man escaped and was not
+hung. The Clyde story was so much like Barker's story that I wondered
+whether it might not be the same, and I went to Garney to ask if he
+knew whether Barker was the man who killed Henley. He would not admit
+knowing anything, but he let slip a word in his first anger that he
+could not take back. It _was_ Barker."
+
+"The villain! And he claimed to be merely a spectator in the court
+room, and that that was how he came to recognize Clyde! He probably
+studied his face pretty carefully during the days when he was watching
+Clyde in the dock where he knew he should have been himself! I don't
+wonder he recognized him. What a man!"
+
+"I wonder if we can prove it," exclaimed Fellows.
+
+"We have just discovered an old letter which will completely establish
+an alibi for Clyde,--I'll tell you the details later. But whether we
+can get your story before the court or not, it is undoubtedly the
+inner truth of the matter and it rounds out the story of Barker's
+villainy very completely. And he met the treachery he dealt out to
+others. He was slain by the hand of the false friend he trusted and
+whom he probably had never wronged."
+
+"But if Garney killed him, what about Benbow?"
+
+"I am going to see him now, and see if I can find out what it is that
+he is concealing. I'm glad I don't have to swear out a warrant against
+you, Fellows!"
+
+Fellows smiled quite humanly as he turned away.
+
+I found Benbow thinner, more nervous, and less self-possessed than I
+had ever seen him before. I was glad to see these signs of
+disintegration in his baffling reserve.
+
+"I have had a strenuous afternoon," I said, as we shook hands. "Since
+four o'clock I have discovered Barker's widow, spoiled an elopement,
+and had your Latin tutor, Garney, arrested."
+
+He looked surprised, naturally, but nothing more. "What for?" he
+asked.
+
+"For complicity in a murder," I said, watching him closely.
+
+"Oh, impossible!" he exclaimed. "Not Mr. Garney!" His natural manner,
+his genuine look of surprise and inquiry, were disconcerting. I saw I
+must work my way carefully.
+
+"Did you know that Mr. Garney had hypnotic powers?" I asked.
+
+Ah, there my probe went home! His tell-tale face flushed and his eyes
+evaded mine.
+
+"I can tell you nothing about that," he said, with dignified reserve.
+
+"Perhaps I may be able to tell you something that will be news to you,
+even though you knew of his practices. He is known on the vaudeville
+stage as Diavolo, and he has toured, giving exhibitions in hypnotism."
+
+"I didn't know that," he said,--and I could not doubt his sincerity.
+"It must have been a long time ago."
+
+"No longer ago than last summer. He kept his own name from the public.
+But I infer that you did know something of his practices in private?"
+
+"Yes," he said, hesitatingly.
+
+"Did you ever allow him to hypnotize you?" I asked abruptly.
+
+He was obviously discomposed, but he tried to cover his embarrassment
+by assuming an air of careless frankness. "Oh, yes. I believe I was a
+good subject. Mr. Garney was trying to develop my mental powers by
+hypnotism. He told me some remarkable accounts of idiots who had been
+mentally stimulated by hypnotic suggestion to do creditable work in
+their classes."
+
+"Was that the direction in which his suggestions were made?" I asked,
+as casually as possible. I must try to get from him, without
+disturbing his sensibilities, as clear an account as he could give me,
+or would give me, of his peculiar relations with Garney.
+
+"Oh, yes. It was just to help me with my Latin. And it did help," he
+added, defensively. I could see that he was not entirely at ease over
+the admission.
+
+"How often did you put yourself under his influence?"
+
+"Oh, I don't remember. Half a dozen times, perhaps."
+
+"Did you remember afterwards what he had said or done to you while you
+were hypnotized?"
+
+"Not a thing! I just went to sleep, and woke up. It isn't different
+from any other kind of sleep," he explained, with a youthful air of
+wisdom, "only that a part of you stays awake inside and takes lessons
+from your teacher while you don't know it."
+
+"So I understand," I said gently. His assumption of superior knowledge
+touched me. "Was it hard to go to sleep?"
+
+"The first time it wasn't easy. Something inside of my brain seemed to
+snap awake just as I was going off,--over and over again. But at last
+I went off. After that it was easier each time. Once he hypnotized me
+in class and I found I had been making a brilliant recitation, though
+I didn't remember anything about it myself. And once he hypnotized me
+while I was asleep, and I never knew it at all until he told me
+afterwards and showed me some things I had written while asleep."
+
+"Did Mr. Garney ever speak to you of Alfred Barker?"
+
+"No." His manner froze, as it always did at any mention of Barker.
+
+"You did not know, then, that there was enmity between the two men?"
+
+"No. I didn't know that Mr. Garney knew--_him_--at all." He swerved
+from pronouncing the name.
+
+"Yes, Barker had acted as his business manager in the vaudeville
+business, and they had quarreled. Now tell me something else. Did
+Garney hypnotize you the day that you hunted up Barker to shoot him?"
+
+"No." A look of dawning uneasiness and indignation crossed his face.
+
+"Did you see him that evening at all?"
+
+"No," he said, with obvious relief.
+
+"Now will you tell me again just what happened that evening,--the
+order of the events?" (My object really was to see whether he would
+change his story. I had no need to refresh my own memory, as his
+former account was entirely clear in my mind.)
+
+"Beginning with the banquet?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, begin there."
+
+"Well, everything went smoothly until Jim Gregory mentioned seeing
+Barker on the street. That spoiled the evening for me. I got away as
+soon as I could."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Just where did you go?--what streets?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I didn't notice. I went home and threw myself down
+on the couch in the library and read Cicero to get my mind quiet.
+Things were whirling so in my brain!"
+
+This was new! Evidently his memory was clearer than when he made his
+first statement to me. "Do you remember what you were reading?" I
+asked, to pin his recollection definitely.
+
+"Yes, it was De Senectute,--an English version Mr. Garney had lent
+me."
+
+I stopped to think. That was the book young Chapman had had in his
+hand the day I hunted him up,--the day after the murder.
+
+"Are you certain it was that book and no other you read?" I asked. I
+felt that I had a thread in my fingers,--a filmy thread that might
+break if I did not work carefully.
+
+"Quite sure. I picked it up at first just to read anything, because it
+was lying there. Mr. Garney had left it that afternoon. And then I
+became interested in it. It was quieting. It made me feel that after
+all life is short and what was the use of cherishing ill-will and
+bitterness towards--well, even a rascal like Barker. It would all be
+over so soon."
+
+"And with that thought in your mind, you went off and shot him, did
+you?" I asked with a smile.
+
+He looked perplexed, and did not answer.
+
+"You didn't have another copy of De Senectute about? I want to be
+sure."
+
+"I am sure. Mr. Garney left it with me that afternoon and asked me to
+pass it on to Chapman when I had looked it over."
+
+"And you did?"
+
+"No. I--I haven't been back to the house, you know, since--since that
+morning."
+
+"But Chapman had it the next day. He said Mr. Garney had given it to
+him."
+
+Gene looked puzzled and thoughtful. "I don't see--"
+
+"As I understand it, the servants were away that evening. Mr. Garney
+could not have come in unless you yourself admitted him, could he?"
+
+"Oh, for that matter, he had my latchkey for the side door,--directly
+into the library. He used to drop in--" He hesitated, and his
+momentary embarrassment gave me the clue.
+
+"When he came to try his hypnotic stunts?" I asked lightly.
+
+"Yes," Gene nodded, looking relieved at my manner.
+
+"But he didn't come that evening?"
+
+"No. I dropped asleep. I slept awfully hard. When I woke up the gas
+was on full blaze." He caught himself up and looked startled.
+
+"It was morning, then?" I said, quickly.
+
+"Yes," he said slowly, evidently trying to puzzle something out. "I
+must have gone to sleep--again."
+
+"But you don't remember that, do you?" I asked. "You think you must
+have,--but do you _remember_ it, as you do the first?"
+
+The perspiration sprang out on his white forehead. "I remembered when
+I woke up that I had killed Barker in the night."
+
+"You remember that you thought in the morning that you had killed
+Barker in the night," I said sharply, "but do you remember killing
+him? Do you remember, as a matter of fact, going to his office? Tell
+me something you saw or did, to prove that you actually remember the
+events of the night."
+
+His face was pitiable. "I can't! I remember going to sleep over the De
+Senectute and I remember waking up in the morning with the gas burning
+in the sunshine,--and I know, of course, that I went out in the night
+and killed Barker,--_but I can't remember it!_ Do you suppose I am
+losing my mind?"
+
+"I think you are just recovering possession of it," I said,
+unsteadily. "By the way, I told you a few minutes ago that Garney had
+been arrested for complicity in a murder. You don't ask whose."
+
+"Whose?" he demanded, startled.
+
+"Alfred Barker's."
+
+"I don't understand--at all," he faltered.
+
+"Garney was in Barker's inner office the night Barker was shot. If you
+were there, you saw him."
+
+He shook his head. "I did not see him."
+
+"Did you see me?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In Barker's outer office."
+
+"No."
+
+"Yet I was there. I was the strange man who came in and waited. Do you
+remember you told me you saw a stranger come in?"
+
+"I--remember that I told you."
+
+"But you don't remember what the man looked like? You didn't recognize
+me as the man?"
+
+He put his hands up suddenly and clutched his head. "Do you think I
+was out of my head that night? Was I--was I--under his influence? Do
+you mean that I was hypnotized when I shot Barker?"
+
+"That is what I have thought possible, but I have changed my mind on
+that point. Benbow, I don't believe that you were out of your room
+that night after you returned from the Frat supper."
+
+He was shaking so that he could not speak, but I saw the piteous
+questioning of his eyes.
+
+"I'll tell you briefly the points that have made the matter at last
+clear, in spite of yourself," I said, reassuringly. "Tell me this,
+first,--when you came into the house that evening, after you left the
+boys at the banquet, was the house lit up or dark?"
+
+"Dark. I lit the gas in the library. I did not go into the rest of the
+house."
+
+"Exactly. Well, I saw the gas lit in the library that evening, and it
+was just a few minutes before ten. I had supposed that your sister and
+at least one servant were in the house, but I have learned they were
+not. Therefore, when I saw the light flare up just before ten in the
+library, you were there."
+
+"Yes," he said, trying to follow.
+
+"You threw yourself down on the couch and read Cicero from a book
+which the next day was in the hands of Chapman. You don't know how
+long you were reading, but you were sound asleep on that couch at
+three o'clock the next morning, for your sister came in and saw you."
+
+"Jean?" he murmured, perplexedly.
+
+"Yes, Jean. Never mind the details. Now it is not humanly possible
+that after reading yourself quiet at ten you could have reached
+Barker's office by foot before I reached there in a taxicab so as to
+secrete yourself in the inner room before I came. Neither is it
+humanly possible that after shooting him at eleven, you could have
+fled for your life down the fire-escape, skulked through the streets,
+and then come home and gone composedly to sleep by three, only to wake
+at six and remember for the first time that a gentleman who has had
+the misfortune to shoot a man is in honor bound to give himself up to
+the law."
+
+He drew his hand over his eyes in a dazed fashion.
+
+I went on. "Minnie, the maid, and her escort, came home at three that
+night and saw a man leaving the house by the library door. She took
+for granted that it was you. But your sister came into the room a few
+minutes later and saw you asleep on the couch. The man who left the
+house was not you."
+
+"Who was it?" he asked, very low.
+
+"It was the man who had your latchkey to the library door. It was the
+man who picked up the De Senectute which you had been reading and
+passed it on to Chapman the next day. It was the man who knew how to
+hypnotize you in your sleep and make your brain believe what he wished
+it to believe. _It was the man who had just shot Barker from his inner
+office and who impressed upon your dormant brain the scene he had just
+been through and made you believe you had acted his part in it_. It
+was Allen Garney."
+
+Benbow looked too paralyzed to really understand the situation. That
+didn't matter. All the missing pieces of the puzzle were now in my
+hands and I saw that I could prove my case and clear Gene in spite of
+his false confession and his traitorous memory. I thought of Jean! It
+was another and the most convincing indication of Garney's abnormality
+that he should have desired to wed the sister of his victim. That was
+strangely revolting. But his passion had carried him beyond his
+judgment.
+
+"The chances are that hypnotizing you was not a part of his original
+plan," I said thoughtfully, going over the links in my own mind. "He
+shot Barker because Barker knew too much about his past, and was not
+to be trusted to keep it a secret. And his suspicion was justified.
+Barker had already given his secret away to Mr. Ellison. Whether he
+knew that instance of bad faith or not, he evidently felt that there
+was no real safety for him until Barker was dead. So he laid a careful
+plan to kill him, and carried it out. But an unsolved murder mystery
+never ceases to be a menace to the murderer. The police would make
+investigations, and his past connection with Barker might possibly
+come out. The fact that he searched Barker's rooms the next night
+shows that he was not easy on that point, even then. There might have
+been papers in Barker's possession which would turn inquiry upon him.
+So,--you offered him the opportunity of making him secure."
+
+"I? How?"
+
+"He saw the light burning in your study. He came in,--perhaps to
+establish an alibi, perhaps merely to get away from himself. He found
+you asleep,--a condition in which he had already hypnotized you. He
+saw his opportunity. By making you believe that you had shot Barker,
+by making you confess, he would forever turn the possibility of
+inquiry from himself. There would be no mystery to provoke backward
+inquiries along the past. And, if I may say so, you had made it easier
+for him to fix that idea in your mind because, as a matter of fact,
+you had harbored ideas of vengeance against Barker. The thought of
+killing him was not wholly alien to you. You had prepared the way for
+the impression Garney wanted you to have,--and he knew that fact. You
+had revealed that side of your mind to him. He used the bitterness
+which was already there as the foundation for the idea of revenge.
+Therefore, when you awoke, and came back to your senses, the idea that
+you had shot Barker did not strike you as an impossibility. You
+remembered it dimly, but there was no intrinsic impossibility in it.
+Do you see that?"
+
+"Yes," he said, in a low voice. "I never could understand why some
+points were so clear and positive in my mind, and yet I could not
+remember the connecting links. It was like remembering spots in a
+dream."
+
+"Those spots were the points Garney had emphasized to you,
+undoubtedly. He took you with him, mentally, step by step, but things
+he failed to touch upon would be blank in your mind. How about your
+revolver, Gene? Did he know where you kept it?"
+
+"Yes. I showed it to him that afternoon."
+
+"Then undoubtedly he took it away when he left. And he remembered to
+impress upon you the thought that you had thrown it away. He was
+careful,--yet he betrayed himself unconsciously. Those apples which he
+ate without thought were a stronger witness against him than his
+careful tissue of lies. But it's all right now. Take my word for it.
+It was the cleverest scheme a criminal brain ever worked out, but the
+righteousness on which the world is built would not permit it to
+triumph. As soon as we can get the matter before the court, you will
+be free."
+
+"Mr. Hilton, there is a telephone call for you at the office,"
+interrupted an attendant.
+
+I shook hands with Gene and went to the office, where I found the
+receiver down, waiting for me. I hardly recognized Katherine
+Thurston's voice at first.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Hilton? Oh, thank goodness I have found you! Jean
+has gone away. I'm terribly worried--"
+
+
+"What makes you think she is gone? Didn't Barney bring her home in a
+cab an hour ago? I told him to."
+
+"He did. I was waiting at Mr. Ellison's for news when she came. She
+told me everything,--the poor child had been terribly imposed on. That
+man made her believe that he could clear Gene,--"
+
+"So he could have done, if he had wanted to!"
+
+"Well, that is what she believed, and so she consented to marry him.
+But of course she was dreadfully worked up over it all, and when she
+came home with Barney and told me about your coming and saving her at
+the last moment, she was so excited that she was hardly coherent. So I
+made her lie down and try to rest, and I left her in her room. Just
+now I went back to see her, and she was gone. Minnie says she went
+away, with a handbag, immediately after I left, and said that she was
+not coming back. When I remember the nervous and excited state she was
+in, I am dreadfully worried."
+
+"How long ago did she leave the house, according to Minnie?"
+
+"Nearly an hour ago. Do you think she could possibly have gone to that
+man?"
+
+"Not at all," I said promptly. "He is in custody."
+
+"But he might have some agents--"
+
+ "I think not. And Jean is a wise child in her own way. The chances
+are that she is safe somewhere. But I'll let the police know, and I'll
+go down to the railway station myself. I'll call you up from time to
+time to see if you have any news."
+
+I reported the matter to police headquarters, and while I could see
+that they were not greatly impressed with the urgency of discovering a
+young woman of twenty who had been lost sight of for less than an
+hour, I confess that I felt more apprehensive than I had admitted to
+Miss Thurston. You see, Jean wasn't a reasonable young woman. She
+was--Jean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+THE ULTIMATE DISCOVERY
+
+
+Jean had so few acquaintances in Saintsbury that there was little
+chance of finding her off on a visit. I went to the railway station
+and tried to discover whether anyone there had seen her or sold a
+ticket to Dunstan, but I found nothing. I believe it was superstition
+more than anything else that sent me finally to Barney. He was at his
+stand, selling papers as calmly as though this chaotic day were like
+any other.
+
+"Barney, Miss Benbow is lost," I said, without preliminary. "She has
+left Mr. Ellison's house, and told the maid she was not coming back. I
+have been to the station to inquire. For heaven's sake, suggest
+something that I can do."
+
+Barney listened sympathetically, but without any manifestation of
+concern.
+
+"Gone, has she? And not coming back! And I'll warrant you haven't had
+a chance to talk to her since I got her home from the church."
+
+"Of course I haven't. I've been at the jail. Barney, we've arrested
+Garney, and he is the man that killed Barker, and Benbow will be
+cleared. But I am not going to talk about anything until I find that
+girl. So don't ask questions. Tell me something to do."
+
+Barney's eyes grew round as saucers, but he was an old soldier. He
+knew when to obey. But he would do it in his own way.
+
+"I'm thinking, Mr. Hilton, that if ye mind your own affairs, ye'll
+best be mindin' hers."
+
+"Is that impertinence, Barney?"
+
+"Divil a bit, your honor, and you with a face on you that would scare
+a banshee into saying prayers!"
+
+"Then, I am in no mood for guessing riddles."
+
+He gave me a glance that made me feel inexpressibly young.
+
+"I'm thinkin' I saw the young leddy go up yonder," he said, nodding
+toward the building where I had my office. "If she was goin' away
+forever, maybe she wanted to say good-bye!"
+
+Could it be possible? I dashed across the street and up the stairs
+without waiting for the slow elevator. I opened the door,--and there
+lay a pathetic little heap on the Daghestan rug on my floor.
+
+[Illustration: _There lay a pathetic little heap on the Daghestan rug
+on my floor_. Page _290_.]
+
+It was a moment before I realized that the tired child was merely
+asleep. I had dropped down beside her and lifted her head upon my arm,
+when she opened her eyes with a start. Then something wonderful and
+dazzling swam up from her unconscious eyes to meet my gaze,--and I
+knew in a bewildering flash that it was no child but a woman that I
+held in my arms. My heart went from me. I did not realize that I had
+kissed her.
+
+She lay quite still for a moment, but her white eyelids fell slowly to
+hide her eyes from mine.
+
+"Thank heaven you are safe!" I murmured. "How could you frighten me
+so?"
+
+She withdrew herself gently from my arms and rose. Her hat was on my
+desk, between the inkstand and the mucilage. She picked it up and
+proceeded to stab it to her head.
+
+"I must have fallen asleep," she murmured, keeping her downcast eyes
+from me. "I just came in to say good-bye, and I waited, and told Mr.
+Fellows he could leave the door unlocked, because I was sure you would
+come, and I was so tired,--"
+
+"Good-bye indeed! Where do you think you are going?"
+
+"I am going back to Miss Elwood's School," she said, with the gentle
+inflexibility I always enjoyed. "I seem to do nothing but get into
+trouble when I am away from there. I didn't tell anyone but Minnie,
+because I didn't want to have to argue about it, but I thought I ought
+to say good-bye to you,--"
+
+"I am glad you remembered to be polite to me," I said, getting
+possession of her hands, "because I have a lot of things to tell you.
+That is,--if you will promise to marry me first!"
+
+"Don't!" she said, breathlessly, drawing away. "You--forget!"
+
+"Forget what?"
+
+"The other girl!"
+
+"There is no other girl,--never was and never will be," I protested.
+"What in the world do you mean, child?"
+
+She looked at me with troubled eyes. "Katherine Thurston said that you
+said there was--someone."
+
+"Oh!" I gasped. That foolish, forgotten incident of the locket! I felt
+myself blushing,--at least I had that grace.
+
+"Let me explain, dear. When Mrs. Whyte introduced me to Miss Thurston,
+I thought she would be more willing to be friends if she were assured
+that I was not going to bother her with any love-making. So, just to
+make things pleasant, I showed her a miniature which I had in my
+pocket and told her that it was a picture of the only woman in the
+world to me."
+
+"And wasn't that true?" she asked gravely.
+
+"It was,--but it isn't true now. Darling, it was my mother's
+face,--the one I took out of this locket." I touched the jeweled
+trifle which lay upon her breast.
+
+"Oh!" A look of terror came into her eyes, as though she drew back
+from an abyss. "Oh, and I might have married that man!"
+
+"Jean! Did that have anything to do with it?"
+
+"Why, I thought that, since I should never marry anyone else, it would
+be awfully selfish to refuse to save Gene," she said simply. "And if
+you were going to marry some strange person, why,--it didn't matter.
+That's what I _thought_."
+
+"Oh, Jean, Jean!" I cried, taking her into my arms. What was the use
+of talking common-sense to a creature like that? I gave it up, and
+talked her own tongue instead! But after awhile she looked up under
+her lashes.
+
+"Was I foolish to believe Mr. Garney?"
+
+"Of course you were, my darling. But perhaps it was a guided
+foolishness. Jean, what you told me about his recognizing that locket
+gave me a clue to the man who shot Barker. Dear, it was not Gene. It
+was Mr. Garney himself."
+
+"Oh! Can it be true?"
+
+"Only too true." I told her some of the strange disconnected links
+which had at last been knit into a strong chain of evidence.
+
+"Was that what he meant to tell me when we were married?" she asked,
+her eyes full of horror.
+
+"No, I do not believe he ever meant to tell you anything,--or at most
+some wild tale like that one about Fellows,--which might have made
+trouble for us, too, if the real discovery had not come so soon. He
+merely wanted to get you to marry him, by hook or crook. He felt
+perfectly safe, I am sure. He thought he had the whole thing in his
+hands when he forced Gene to believe and to confess what would forever
+close future investigation."
+
+"And Gene will now go free?"
+
+"Perfectly free,--free to dance at our wedding. Don't forget that," I
+said.
+
+She laughed,--which was what I wanted. I could not let her break
+nervously under all this emotional strain.
+
+"Then everything has turned out happily except for poor Mr. Clyde!"
+she said, clasping her hands hard together.
+
+"Oh, my precious child, I quite forgot all about Mr. Clyde! He is just
+as happy as the rest of us. That letter of yours, you angel of all
+good tidings, is going to save him. It was from your father, you know,
+and it proves that Mr. Clyde was not in Houston that fatal night. I
+had to leave him to come back to look after you, but that is going to
+be all straightened out in a very short time. All because of that
+letter, dearest girl! See how things have worked out!"
+
+She looked at me, breathless, bewildered, trying to understand all
+these marvels. Then suddenly she burst into nervous tears. It was just
+as well. It relieved the emotional strain--and it gave me a chance to
+comfort her.
+
+
+It was some time before I remembered that Miss Thurston and Mr.
+Ellison and Mrs. Whyte and the police department were still uninformed
+that Miss Jean Benbow need not be the object of further search.
+
+"You see!" I pointed out to her. "You put all the rest of the world
+out of my mind. Now stand here and tell me what I shall say to Mrs.
+Whyte." And I took down the office telephone.
+
+"Tell her that since I have lost my train, I'll come back for awhile,"
+she said demurely.
+
+"Is that your only reason for staying, young lady?"
+
+"Isn't that enough?"
+
+"There are other trains!"
+
+"But I have lost the one I wanted!"
+
+"What have you found instead?"
+
+She would not answer.
+
+"What have you found?" I insisted, drawing her to me.
+
+But what my Story-Book Girl told me I shall not repeat.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Saintsbury Affair, by Roman Doubleday
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56838 ***