"Swing low, sweet chariot, Come fo' to carry me home."

Bat stood for a while in silent inspection of the place.

"Nothing doing, evidently," he said. "Just as quiet as you please."

He turned his eyes for a few moments upon the surrounding houses; and when they wandered back he noted with a start that one of the upper windows was now illuminated. He stared steadfastly at it, and as he was doing so the light grew brighter; he stood wondering at this, then he saw Mary Burton, a candle in her hand, appear at the window. But this was only for a moment; she moved away and the light dimmed, finally disappearing completely.

"She's left the room and closed the door," said Bat.

A few moments passed, and then a second window, this time on the floor below, flashed up with light. It remained so for some little time, now growing dimmer, and now stronger, showing that the girl was moving about the room. Then, like the other, the window suddenly became blank. One after another the windows were lighted up in the same fashion; sometimes Bat saw the girl, her dressing gown held about her with one hand, while with the other she held the candlestick. Then both she and the light disappeared altogether.

"Quite an active little excursion," said Bat. "Quite active and extraordinary. What is it about, I wonder? Why this sudden parade through the house on the quiet?"

He remained where he was for a short space of time. But all was silent save for the maid crooning the hymn, and the occasional inquiring bark of the dog on the next place, who probably got a strange scent coming down the wind. As there was nothing more to be hoped for there, he shifted his position to the other side. And as he came in range of the sitting-room window he saw the invalid reclining once more in her chair, supported by pillows, and with the nurse bending over her.

"Well," said Bat, after he had pondered over this scene for some time, "that seems to be taps for the evening."

He lingered a half hour, however, thinking there might be a possibility of something more; but as nothing happened, he made his way to the street, and crossed to the opposite side. Standing in the sheltering shadows of a building, while he contemplated the Burton house once more, he was given a start by a voice saying:

"Taking a look at it, eh? Well, it's worth it. I've been here ever since the place was Stanwick village, and I ain't never seen goings on in any home like I've seen in that one."

The speaker stood almost at Bat's side; he leaned upon a cane, and from the shaky quality of his voice, Scanlon felt that he must be of advanced age.

"That's where the murder was done, isn't it?" asked the big athlete. For there was a gossipy suggestion in the tone of the old man which made a show of non-certainty of possible value.

"Yes, sir; that's it. That's where Thomas Burton was found dead of a crushed skull," replied the old resident. "That's the house of his son and daughter. I see the father taken away to be buried, and I see the son taken away to be put in jail. And I see the daughter's doctor coming to see her every day."

Here the old gentleman broke into a cackle of laughter.

"Every day," he repeated. "In a carriage with a little medicine case."

"An old party who seems to have his wits about him," said Bat to himself. "And not at all backward about making a show of them."

"I have a son," continued the old man, "and my son has a wife. We live a little piece down the street. My son's wife is fussy; she doesn't like any kind of public notice. And so, when I wanted to go to the police with what I've seen, she wouldn't hear of it. She said we might even have our names in the papers."

"Women are that way sometimes," said Scanlon. "I've noticed it more than once."

"Fools, I call them," declared the old resident. "But when they have control of things, you've got to let them have their way." He stood with his face turned toward No. 620 for a few moments and then continued: "Yes, sir, queer things go on in that house. People that's sick don't act the way she does."

"Who does?" asked Bat.

"Why, that girl over there! Every day stealing away out at the back door with a veil over her face and some one's else clothes on, and taking a taxicab for I don't know where."

"You saw that, did you?" asked Bat, eagerly.

"Yes, sir, I saw it; and I've seen it every day since the police were taken off guard. Sick!" again came the cackling old laugh. "Sick! Why, she ain't no more sick than I am."



CHAPTER XXI

WHAT THE BURGLAR SAID AT GAFFNEY'S

What the old resident of Stanwick said to Bat Scanlon aroused that gentleman to a high pitch, and he began asking eager questions.

"I don't know where she goes," said the man. "I wish I did. But I've seen her two or three times, and she was just as spry as you'd want anybody to be. Sick! Sick nothing!"

Bat's questions continued for some time, but this was the only fact the old man had; and so the big athlete bade him good-night.

Scanlon thought it best not to go to the railroad station, for there he would be almost certain to encounter the Swiss and Big Slim. There was an electric road which cut through the far end of the suburb, and he concluded it were safer to use this into the city, even though it did take much more time.

"But everything's done for the night," said he. "I've got a few more things to think about, too. So what difference does a half hour or so make?"

Bat got to bed at his hotel at about midnight; but it was several hours later before he got to sleep, for the events of the night tossed and mingled in his mind in a most distracting fashion. Consequently, next day, he arose late, and when he reached the gymnasium it was almost noon. A note lay upon his desk in the office written in a well-known hand.

"I have taken the liberty of borrowing Danny," it read. "There is a matter of some importance which I desire to get at the bottom of, and a small red-haired boy is perhaps the best agent I could employ. Keep in touch with me.

"ASHTON-KIRK."

Jimmy Casey, who taught the use of boxing gloves in the gymnasium, explained the matter.

"He comes here, in an awful rush, about ten o'clock," said Jimmy, "and wants to see you. When he finds out you ain't here, he says it's all right, and don't make no difference anyhow. So he goes into the office and talks to the kid. And maybe that kid ain't glad, or nothing. His mug looked like a tin pan that'd just been scoured. A couple of minutes later they beat it away in a cab."

"It's all right," said Mr. Scanlon. "Some little hurry-up business, I guess."

All day Bat worked steadily with his clients. Once in the afternoon he paused long enough to call Nora on the telephone. Her response was cheerful; indeed, she talked rather gaily of many things, and he finally hung up the receiver with a wrinkle of discontent between his brows.

As evening came he took a shower and a rub-down, and then went out for a stroll. He had no definite notion in his mind except that he wanted fresh air; but, somehow, his steps led him to the neighborhood of Bohlmier's hotel.

"Being here," said he, "I may as well go in and visit the halt and the lame. I wonder how much damage I did those two parties. Maybe I'll find them in their beds."

He entered the office. Behind the desk was the thick-necked young man with the low, stand-up collar.

"Hello," saluted Scanlon. "Where's the boss?"

"Not feeling right," replied the thick-necked one. "Got a cold, I guess. Settled in his throat."

Bat turned away with a grin hidden behind one hand. In the lounging room of the place he looked about for Big Slim; not seeing him, he ascended the stairs and knocked upon a door on the third floor.

"Come in," said the voice of the lank burglar.

Bat pushed open the door, and found the man standing in the middle of the floor, pulling on his coat.

"Just run up to see if I couldn't drag you off to get some eats," said Bat, cordially.

"I'm hungry," said the burglar, "but I don't know if I can work my face or not." He displayed a swollen region extending from his left eye to the angle of his jaw; besides being puffed and painful looking, it was badly discolored. "Get that? Some bump, eh?"

"I should say, yes," replied Scanlon. "How did it happen?"

"Last night," stated Big Slim. "I spotted a fellow in the dark who's turned a trick on a friend of mine. So I made a try to get him. But," with candor, "I didn't. He got me."

"Tough," sympathized Bat. "But wait! Maybe you'll have your chance to come back. You never can tell."

Big Slim grinned. With his distorted face this was not a pleasant sight, and the look in his eyes was sly and wicked.

"I'll get back," said he. "Leave it to me for that. I'll lay him out so stiff that a slab in the morgue'll be bent like a pretzel in comparison."

Bat looked at the man with all the unrestraint of the practiced negotiator.

"Who is he?" he asked, carelessly.

Again the sly, wicked look came into the eyes of the burglar.

"Don't be in a hurry," said he. "You'll know when the time comes."

Bat drew in a deep, silent breath at this; and when the burglar threw open the lid of a trunk, which he dragged from under the bed, and took from the tray a black, well-oiled automatic pistol, he felt a tightening of the scalp. But Big Slim put the weapon in his pocket.

"No one's ever tagged me out without me landing on his neck," declared he. "I do it one way or another, but I always do it."

They went down-stairs and Big Slim led the way into a back room. It was the same in which Bat had seen the Swiss playing the flute on the night of Nora's unaccountable visit. But Bohlmier was not at all musically inclined at this time.

"No, no," he was saying to the thick-necked young man, "I will nothing to eat have. I am seek! Ach, how I am seek!"

Big Slim looked at Scanlon and grinned; then he whispered behind his hand:

"He was in on the same lot of treatment. The guy got him before he did me." Then to Bohlmier he added: "How's the sore throat?"

"Bad," replied the Swiss, in a strained way. "I a doctor haf had. He said I was lucky that I was not killed."

"Well, you wasn't," said Big Slim. "So forget that part of it."

The eyes of Bohlmier, with a cat-like glare in them, went to Bat; then he motioned to the burglar, who bent over his chair. The Swiss whispered croakingly in the other's ear. Bat could get a word here and there, but not sufficient to make any sense of what was being said. Once or twice he saw the eyes of the two men turn upon him, and their eager expression—deadly and cunning—made him uneasy.

"Sure," he heard Big Slim say. "That's right. I didn't miss that trick."

Then the whispering resumed. He caught fragments, such as: "Get him down there." "Gaffney's." "I'll fix him, all right."

"Who, me?" said Bat, to himself, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. "Do they really know I'm the party who put them on the hospital list? And are they framing it, right under my nose, to get even?"

He had heard of such things before—the fate of a victim planned in his hearing and he never the wiser for it. But he hunched his great shoulders and nodded his head. There were victims and victims. And if they tried to lead him into anything he resolved to do his best to prove to them that it was not a sheep they were handling.

"I'll make the proceedings much more interesting than last night's," he promised himself. "There was no 'follow up' then. This time there'll be plenty of it."

In a few moments more the burglar turned to Bat.

"Bohlmier wants us to go down and see a friend of ours," said he. "After we get some feed, you know."

"Sure," said Bat, readily. "Anything to be sociable."

They nodded to the Swiss, who sat following them with inflamed eyes as they left the room. Their journey through the dirty streets to Joey Loo's was a silent one; and as they entered the high-smelling, underground place and seated themselves, the silence was unbroken. One of the detached fragments which Scanlon had caught, a few minutes before, kept recurring to him.

"Gaffney's!" flashed and reflashed through his mind. He paid no attention to it at first; but the mere repetition of the name finally claimed his attention.

"Gaffney's!" He considered it thoughtfully as Big Slim talked to the Chinaman who came to serve them. "Why, yes; didn't I hear that name somewhere before? And not so long ago, unless I'm much mistaken."

He pondered; but where he had heard it refused to come back, and so he dismissed it from his mind. He gave his order to the stolid, greasy-looking Oriental; and then, looking about the place, said to his companion:

"Funny looking crowd, eh?"

Big Slim allowed his eyes to flit about from one pale, hollow face to another.

"There's enough to start a 'snow' party right here, if you had the stuff," said he. "I could pick you out twenty customers without making a mistake."

"It beats booze, that stuff," said Bat. "I've seen some tough examples of how it worked."

"Great business," said Big Slim, a covetous glint in his eyes. "Big money in it. I'd like to raise a nice stake and get hold of a lot of 'snow.' I'll bet I'd take in more real change than a gambling house."

"Stick to cracking cribs," begged Bat "It's got more stuff in it for a man with nerve."

"Listen," said the lank burglar as he leaned across the table, "using your nerve all the time ain't what they tell you it is. Nerve ain't with you always; and when it's all warped and faded with hard usage, that's all you get. If you can't buy more and you can't patch up the old, what are you going to do? So why not a corner in the dope market as an easy graft?"

"It don't listen good," said Bat, positively. "I'd rather get a big name for opening babies' banks. It wouldn't sting so much."

"You're a regular particular guy, ain't you?" Big Slim had a disagreeable grin on his thin-lipped mouth, and eyed Scanlon attentively. "You must have been well brought up."

They ate their food in comparative silence when it was brought; and as soon as they had finished the burglar pushed back his chair.

"Let's get down to Gaffney's," said he. He put his hand to his swollen face as they arose. "I've got a little trick to turn."

The streets were crowded with a mass of cheap pleasure seekers; the burlesque theatres and motion picture places were besieged with throngs; from the open fronts of auction houses the strident voices of the auctioneers rose in feeling appeals that every one grasp the opportunities offered. "Store show" keepers stood upon high, narrow platforms draped all about with canvases upon which were painted monstrous errors of nature and "wonders" fresh from far-off lands. There was a smell of uncleaned corners and open drains; the very mud of the streets held a greasy quality which made the unaccustomed passer shudder a little, and make haste.

And upon all this was thrown the glitter of many lights; from iron poles they hung in huge white domes; windows, filled with flashy merchandise, blazed with clusters of them; reeking alleys were exposed by the glare of their hanging lights as is a deep-set, poisonous sac by the scalpel of the surgeon. Illuminated signs of all sorts glared at one; some were lurid and stationary; others again flowed about in never ending contortions, making grotesque and high-pitched proclamations.

"Gaffney's round here somewhere?" asked Bat, after they had walked through the district for some little time.

"Just off here a little ways," replied the burglar. They turned a corner under the lee of a glaring saloon and found themselves in a small street which lay like a back-water off that thronged avenue. "There it is now."

Bat saw a dingy-looking place with the name "Gaffney" painted in red letters upon the window and two billiard cues in yellow crossed beneath it. They entered and were greeted by a babble of voices, an incessant clicking of balls and the thick odor of poor tobacco. Here and there games of more than ordinary interest were going on; the principals were, as a rule, fox-like young men who wore no coats and staked their handling of their cues against the world for a living. Small crowds were gathered about these contests; the "shots" were lightning-like, and of great precision.

Lining the walls were rows of men, some with vacant faces, others alert and predatory; and as Bat looked about, he noted what he had noted in such places many times before.

"A hang-out for quitters and a meeting-place for yeggs," he thought. "There's more good time wasted in places like this and more crooked deeds hatched than would put a roof over Lake Michigan."

With Big Slim, he took a station at the far end of the place; here and there was a doorway opening into a smaller room and in which more tables were erected.

"Get that fellow with the curly mop," said the burglar, indicating this doorway. "Inside there."

A middle-aged man in his shirt-sleeves, with a remarkably high collar and a shock of curling and very dark hair, was arranging the balls at one of the inner tables. The shirt sleeves were loudly striped and the curling hair was arranged in ornamental waves of which he seemed very vain; for as Bat watched, he saw the man gaze into a specked mirror and pass a hand carefully over them.

"He looks like the beginning of a parade," said Bat. "Who is he?"

"Name's Hutchinson, and he runs this place for Gaffney," replied Big Slim. "And," here he grinned and pulled at his bony fingers until they cracked, "he's a very intimate friend of a friend of mine."

"That so?" Scanlon looked at the man reflectively, and tried to think what possible bearing this could have on the matter which interested him. As far as he was able to see, it had none; but somehow the name Gaffney once more became active in his mind, and this troubled him.

"It's because it's painted on everything around the place," reasoned Bat. "The walls and the cue racks have it; and as I stand here I can see it done backwards on the front window. Gaffney means nothing in my young life, so what is his name bumping around in my head for?"

And then, just as he was on the verge of banishing it from his thoughts, a solution of the name's persistence flashed upon him. It had been used by Dennison that day at the Polo Club. He had called it after Ashton-Kirk as they were leaving.

"That's it!" was Bat's mute exclamation. "That's it. It was Dennison. He was telling us of how the Bounder said he was to meet some one—an off-color party—Dennison thought,—to arrange a little matter of business. And the meeting was to be at Gaffney's."

The big athlete thrilled at the idea. Was it possible that this obscure place was the one meant? But why not? It was just the sort of establishment the Bounder would have selected for a meeting with a crony of the underworld. And it was possible, too, that——

"A friend of a friend of yours," said Bat, to the man at his side. "Well, he might be all right, in spite of his looks."

"He used to deal faro at Danforth's place on the avenue," said Big Slim. "But he's down and out. Maybe," with another grin, "he tried the game himself."

"Sometimes they do," said Bat. "But it's like opening the door of an elevator shaft and walking through."

"He's great pals with a fellow named Fenton," said Big Slim. As he said this, one hand went to his coat pocket in a caressing sort of gesture; and Bat realized, with a ray of comprehension, that this was the pocket into which the burglar had slipped the black, well-oiled automatic. "They're like a couple of brothers."

"I see," said Bat. "A league of two, eh? Well, that's nice. It makes it handy for people who might want to see either of them. Find one and you're sure of the other."

Big Slim nursed the concealed weapon and grinned disagreeably.

"Hutchinson's here," said he, "and so I'm sure Fenton'll be here. And Fenton's the party I want to meet up with."

"I notice," observed Bat, with a downward nod, "that you are coddling your 'gat' some, and so I take it that this fellow Fenton and yourself ain't on good terms."

"Right," said the burglar, readily. "A good guess. We ain't." He took the hand from the pocket and pointed to his swollen face. "It was Fenton done that," said he. "And it was him that almost done for Bohlmier."

The eyes of the big athlete blinked rapidly at this, and he wanted to laugh! But he did not.

"So!" said he. "I get you. It was Fenton who decorated you with that 'shanty.' Well, well." He looked at the other speculatively and added: "But I thought you said it was dark. How did you know him?"

"Who else would be hanging around there?" demanded Big Slim, almost savagely. "Nobody else in the world."

"Hanging around where?" asked Bat, innocently.

Upon the point of replying, the burglar checked himself.

"It don't make any difference where," he said. "I got this on him, all right." There was a pause between them for a few moments, filled with the click-click of the balls, the comments of the spectators and the fervent ejaculations of the players. Then Big Slim said, in an altered tone: "Say, you put that thing over pretty slick on Allen that night at Duke Sheehan's; how'd you like to take on a job of slugging this guy?"

"This Fenton party?"

"Yes. He's bigger than I am—just as Allen was; and it'd be a bad chance if I 'gunned' him."

Scanlon realized instantly that if he refused the man's proposition there would be a blur in their relationship, and this might prevent the unfolding of several things which he felt must be unfolded. So he replied without hesitation:

"Let's have a look at him, if he comes in."

A table became vacant in the back room in a few minutes, and Bat and the burglar took possession of it. They had played for about a half hour when Big Slim, in a journey about the table, apparently to survey the balls from a new angle, said to Scanlon in a low tone:

"Spot the fellow with the broken nose, talking to Hutchinson. That's him."

While the burglar sighted and prepared for a difficult shot, Bat took occasion to inspect the man in question. He had just entered and seemed rather breathless; a cap was fitted down upon his head; he wore no overcoat and his coat collar was turned up, while the garment was buttoned tightly about him. Though only about middle size, he was strongly built and had a rugged, enduring look. His one prominent feature was his nose. This had been broken at some time or other and seemed absolutely boneless and flat.

"I've got him," said Bat. "There's no two noses like that anywhere."

Fenton talked rapidly to Hutchinson; he had the short-breathed, eager manner of a man who bore tidings of an unusual nature; his gestures were short and expressive of subconscious restraint The manager of the pool room stood listening, a look of stupefaction upon his face; and as Bat watched, he put out his hand and touched the other as though to assure himself that the situation was a reality and not a thing of the imagination. Then he emerged from his dazed state, becoming immediately alert; he said something to Fenton in a quick, nervous sort of way, and the man with the broken nose stopped at once in his eager career, yet with all the indications remaining of one who ached to disburden himself.

Hutchinson placed the care of the tables in the hands of a boy who assisted him, and then went with Fenton to a far corner where the disfigured one recommenced his interrupted communication.

"That guy's lucky to get away with a plain beating," remarked Big Slim, as he chalked his cue. "For I got something on him—something strong."

"That so?" said Scanlon, as he surveyed the array of balls on the table with a great deal of assumed attention.

"Remember what I told you about the woman and the 'sparks' I meant to lift?"

"Oh, yes," said Bat, without a quiver; "and the husband that beat you to it."

"The husband was croaked that night," said Big Slim, tossing the chalk upon a near-by window ledge. "And Fenton is the guy who did it."



CHAPTER XXII

WHAT DANNY SAW AT QUIGLEY'S

Bat Scanlon touched the cue ball, deftly; the ball it struck broke away at a sharp angle and vanished into a pocket.

"I'm getting case hardened," was the big athlete's mental comment. "A day or two ago this news would have rocked me to the foundations; now I'm not even jarred."

But, as he straightened up, he said to the burglar:

"So friend husband went out under the care of the lad with the concave face! Well, well! That is some startling tidings."

"I could send him to the chair if I wanted to," said Big Slim, longingly. "But I never hook up with the 'bulls' for anything. So I'll just either 'gun' him, or you'll slug him, whichever way it turns out."

"Keep the gun hid," advised Bat. "You can't get away with that stuff. I'll take this fellow on, and in a morning or two you'll hear how he's holding down a bed in a neighboring hospital with enough bruises and contusions to fill a peach basket."

"All right," said Big Slim, grinning appreciatively. "The job's in your hands. Don't be too long, for Bohlmier's waiting, and it was his idea in the first place."

"It might come off in an hour,—who knows?" said Bat. "But," with a glance at Fenton, "it does seem a pity to crush all that enthusiasm. He must be happier at this minute than he's been for years."

The broken-nosed man's excitement seemed to increase; he talked with many gestures; now and then he laughed in a delighted sort of way and slapped Hutchinson on the shoulder. The latter smoothed his waved hair and looked vastly interested; now and then when an opportunity came in Fenton's flood of talk he asked a question, and after each answer he seemed to advance a key toward the high pitch of the other.

"In a second or two," remarked Bat, in a low voice, "he'll be rumpling his hair; and if he ever does that, he'll never get over it."

For at least a half hour the talk went on between the two; at the finish Hutchinson was quite as excited as Fenton.

"It's a pipe," Bat heard him declare in an exultant tone; "a regular pipe. All we got to do is to——" Here the voice sank and he went on, his hands clutching Fenton's arms in a strong grip. The intense eagerness of the two, the excitement which one had imparted to the other, interested Bat. So many curious and unaccountable things had happened of late that he had gotten into the habit of looking for them, and it was with difficulty that he separated even ordinary occurrences from the matter which had been so growing in his mind. It might be, so ran his thought, that this incident had its place in the chain he had seen making—a tangled, hopeless chain to him, without beginning or end.

"But then again—and it's a thousand to one against—it might be nothing at all," was Bat's next judgment. "I'm getting all mixed in my signals and——"

Here he became aware that Big Slim was talking to him; the burglar had run the game out and had put away his cue.

"As you've taken on this thing for me," he was saying, "I'm going across the river to look up some prospects."

"All right," said Bat, nodding. "Go ahead. I'll stick around a while."

With a wink and a gesture of the thumb toward Fenton, Big Slim went away. Bat carelessly stepped nearer to the two men and seemed greatly interested in a racing chart posted upon the wall.

"I told you there was a chance," Fenton was saying. "Didn't I? I knew the thing would pull up at Quigley's some time or another, didn't I?"

"I didn't think much of it," said Hutchinson, with the air of one who was wrong, and is quite delighted with his bigness in acknowledging it. "But I can see now that I didn't look at it right."

"Leave it to me," said Fenton, smiling expansively. "Little tricks like this are right in my line. And now I'll tell you what we'll do; we'll——"

But Hutchinson stopped him.

"Wait," said he. "Don't be in a rush. This ain't the kind of a thing to hurry through. You've got to take your time; you've got to think it out." The broken-nosed man seemed impressed by both the manner and the words of the other; and, noting this, Hutchinson went on: "Sleep on it. That's a good way. And I'll do the same. Then I'll run in to your place to-morrow afternoon, and we can put your ideas into good shape."

Fenton seemed to consider this quite a sober, steadying notion, and after a few moments more of conversation the man with the ornamental hair went back to the superintending of his pool tables, and the other took his departure.

Bat followed him. The big athlete was not at all sure but that Big Slim would be lurking somewhere outside in order to see if he made any move to carry out his promise against Fenton; and to be seen close upon the trail of the broken-nosed man would be excellent testimony of his good faith.

"And then," he told himself as he went along, Fenton in plain sight, "I want to locate this party, anyway. It will be useful in the show-down."

Fenton stepped out of the little back-water in which Gaffney's place lay, and into the full flood of the glittering, high-smelling avenue. Here there was a danger of losing him in the press and Bat increased his speed, working his way nearer to his quarry. In a few blocks there was another turn, this time into an unfrequented street which had a familiar look. Bat fell back here, and took to the opposite side, holding close to the buildings and walking upon the balls of his feet so as to avoid the usual ringing heel strokes. At the mouth of an alley, Fenton slackened his speed and then disappeared. Bat, from the other side of the street, inspected the place, with mouth twisted awry.

"I've got it," said he. "That's the alley I slipped into the night I tagged after Bohlmier and his pal. And in the said alley is located the house they went into. I wonder," and here he stroked his jaw, "if this fellow with the broken nose has anything to do with the room they broke into through the wall?"

The more he considered this point, the more likely it seemed to be true; and if it were, then Ashton-Kirk had known of Fenton long since.

"Yes, he was onto him," mused Scanlon, his thoughts turning to that night's meeting with the disguised investigator in the same building. "Kirk's had him spotted."

He lingered for some time looking into the gloom of the alley; then it occurred to him that nothing further could be done there, and that a great deal might be done somewhere else. Instantly he started along the street, heading for the same cab stand which Ashton-Kirk and himself had patronized on the night of which he had just been thinking. Here he secured a taxi, and in a short time drew up at the investigator's door. Stumph admitted him, and as he mounted the stairs toward the study, he heard the voice of Ashton-Kirk.

"Hello! Glad to see you." The investigator greeted him with a hand-shake. "Do you know that your office staff is also here?"

"Danny?" said Bat. "No, is he? What's the idea?"

"Came to make a report, I suppose. Didn't you get my note saying I had borrowed him for a while?"

"Oh, yes," said Bat. "That's so."

He followed the other into the study, and there they saw Danny, his red hair glowing under the lights and deep in the pages of some illustrated papers. But he got up and stood looking at his employer with a grin.

"Hello, Mr. Scanlon," said he. "I hope you ain't mad or nothin' for my going away and leaving the office."

"I've explained all that, Danny," said Ashton-Kirk, and Bat nodded good-humoredly. "And now let's hear what you have to tell."

"I tried to get you on the telephone an hour ago," said Danny, as they all three sat down at the table. "Maybe it was longer than that. But Mr. Stumph said you wasn't in, and then I told him I was coming around to wait till you got here."

"Quite right," smiled the crime specialist, approvingly.

"When we left the office," Danny told Scanlon, "we took a taxi. And we went to the Chandler Building. And up on the sixteenth floor we went into an office which was empty. Mr. Ashton-Kirk told me I was to stay there and was to watch things that happened in the place across the hall."

"A sort of speculator in precious stones," said Ashton-Kirk, to Bat. "He buys and sells; and his buying is not always aboveboard. He is also a pawnbroker in a large way."

"I see," said Bat.

"There is a glass in the door of the place," proceeded Danny, eagerly, "glass that you can see through. And I could look through the keyhole of the office I was in right into Mr. Quigley's."

"Quigley's!" said Bat, anxiously, for this was the name he had caught in the excited conversation between Fenton and Hutchinson.

"That's the name of the man who keeps the diamond place," Danny informed him. "There was little boxes, like stalls, right up at a counter, and all with doors on them. People went into these, and then nobody could see who they were. Mr. Quigley would stand back of the counter and talk to them; you could see him, all right, and the safe where he keeps his money and watches and things. There was a good many people went in—some of them ladies—and I thought I'd get a sore eye from peeping through the keyhole; but there wasn't anybody," to Ashton-Kirk, "like the one you told me about."

"You are sure?" asked the investigator.

"Now wait!" begged Danny, who had no desire to spoil the effect of his story by over-haste. "At noon time the waiter from the lunch place came up and handed me in the eats you said he would. While I was feeding myself, I stood up close, to the door so's I could hear if any one stopped at the shop across the way. If they didn't, then I didn't have to peep."

"A good idea," approved Ashton-Kirk.

"So that's what I done after that," said Danny. "When I heard anybody open Quigley's door I looked out to see if it was the lady you wanted. After a while I heard somebody walk down the hall and stop outside my door. They didn't go in at the diamond place, and they didn't go on along down the hall, so I peeped to see who it was. I knowed it would be a man, because he walked so heavy.

"But he stood so close up to my door that I could see only a piece of his back; after a bit, though, he got across the hall, and I had a good shot at him; he was kind of bent over and was looking into Quigley's, too. While he was there I heard somebody else coming, and this time it was a lady, because she came click-click-click like ladies do with their high heels. And as soon as he heard the noise, the man at the door of the diamond place beat it along the hall in a hurry. And then the lady went into Quigley's."

"What sort of a lady?" asked Ashton-Kirk.

"I don't know," replied Danny, apologetically. "She had a veil on that covered over her face; but she was a young lady; I could see that by her dress and her shoes and her hat. She went into one of the little stalls, and Mr. Quigley commenced to talk to her. And then the man who had been looking in at the door came back and began to look in again, only this time he seemed like he was excited about something. He was afraid to stand up and look straight in like he did before; he only peeped in at one edge, and so I could see in, too. After Mr. Quigley talked to the lady a while I seen her hands, with gloves on them, reach out of the stall toward him, and they had a necklace in them that I'll bet was diamonds."

"A necklace! Was that all?"

"I didn't see anything else. So they talked about it for a long while; a couple of times Mr. Quigley give it back to her and shook his head like as if he didn't want to give that much money for it. But she always got it back to him, and then he put the necklace in the safe and gave her some money. The man that was looking in at the door blew away again as the lady came out. She still had her veil on, and as she went up the hall I opened the door, making believe I was just going out on an errand, or something, for my boss. And when I got in the hall I seen the man come from around a corner and stare after the lady like as if she was the only one in the world."

"Did you notice anything about this man that would make you know him again if you saw him?" asked Ashton-Kirk.

"Sure," said Danny. "I'd know him all right. He's got a broken nose—the flattest one I ever saw."



CHAPTER XXIII

A WOMAN!

When Danny made this declaration, Scanlon leaned back in his chair and drew a long breath of mingled surprise and satisfaction. So that had been the subject of Fenton's excited consultation with Hutchinson—a diamond necklace, pawned, or sold, by a woman. And from Fenton's own words, it was a thing he had been expecting.

Bat was about to break into a detailed account of all he had seen and heard since his last conversation with the investigator; but Ashton-Kirk was closely questioning Danny, so the big man held his peace. Finally the office boy had told all he knew and departed; then Bat, comfortably settled back in his chair, spoke.

"A flat-nosed fellow, eh?" said he. "Name of Fenton, I think."

He saw the keen eyes of the other flash him a look; it was the first surprise Scanlon had noted in Ashton-Kirk since the hunt began, and it filled him with immense satisfaction. He reached for a cigar and lighted it carefully.

"Lives in a tenement house, off on the other end of town," said he, after he had the cigar going well. "The same house where I ran across you—remember?"

Ashton-Kirk laughed.

"You are coming on," said he.

"Maybe," nodded the big athlete, "a little faster than you think, even now. I've had a few things happen to me in the last twenty-four hours that have lots of ginger in them."

And so, pausing now and then to draw at his cigar, he related all that had occurred both on that night and the night before. Ashton-Kirk listened with careful attention, and when Bat had finished, he said:

"You appear to have had quite a time of it. I am obliged to you for some of the points you have made; they throw light upon corners which up to now have been rather obscure."

"What worries me," said Bat, "is that——"

But the investigator stopped him.

"To worry in a matter like this is to admit that you are jumping at conclusions," said Ashton-Kirk. "And that only, so to speak, clouds the water; it makes it almost impossible to see any distance ahead, and spoils one's judgment of what is already in one's hand."

There was a short pause, and then the speaker went on:

"I grew somewhat interested in Gaffney's place at once upon hearing Dennison speak of it that afternoon at the Polo Club. After assuming the disguise you saw me in, I went there and engaged in a game at one of the tables. Inside of an hour I had the information that the Bounder had occasionally visited the place, and always to meet a man of the name of Fenton. Fenton was in the rooms at the time, and when he went home I trailed him. I rented the room almost across the hall from his, with the same idea in my mind as that of your friend the burglar's."

"I got that at the time," spoke Bat Scanlon. "But what was the idea?"

"There were diamonds in question," said Ashton-Kirk. "The diamonds Tom Burton took from Nora Cavanaugh. It occurred to me, after considering the matter carefully, that Fenton might have them in his possession. But my search of his room, just finished as Bohlmier and Big Slim arrived, showed me that they were not kept there, at least."

"This whole business about those diamonds sounds kind of funny to me," said Bat. "Nora told her maid she put them away in a bank vault; how do you know she didn't recover them in some way and do just that very thing?"

Ashton-Kirk pressed one of the series of call bells.

"That brings us to a point upon which I think we can expect definite intelligence," said he.

In a few moments Fuller appeared, dapper and alert.

"How soon will you be ready to make a report upon the matter you have been working up?" asked the investigator.

"Right away," replied Fuller, as he spread some typewritten papers upon the table. "I put it on the machine while I was waiting to speak to you."

Ashton-Kirk took up the sheets, and his eyes ran quickly over them.

"This is about what I expected," said he, finally. "You are sure you missed no one?"

"Quite sure. I first called on those banks and trust companies which I fancied Miss Cavanaugh did business with. She had an account in several. But she had no box in the safety deposit vault, and she had deposited nothing save money. I went from one bank to another; some of them were disinclined to give any information, but when they were convinced it was police business, they answered my questions."

"The result, then, is that Miss Cavanaugh did not deposit anything in the vaults of any bank in the city."

"She did not," replied Fuller, positively.

The investigator looked at Scanlon, and the big man nodded his head, gravely.

"All right," said he; "that's settled. And now what comes next?"

"From what you have told me and from what Danny has said," replied Ashton-Kirk, "I rather think a little talk with Fenton would not be out of place."

"Good!" said Bat.

"First," continued the investigator, "we'll see what's to be had from his friend, Hutchinson. I'm rather of the opinion that he has some information which would be of use to us."

They rose, and as they put on hats and coats, Ashton-Kirk said to Fuller:

"Perhaps you'd better come along, Fuller. If things go as I think they will we are in for a rather busy night and may need your help."

The three boarded a street car not far from the investigator's house; after they had alighted, a walk of ten minutes brought them to Gaffney's place.

"Remain within call," said Ashton-Kirk to his aide. "We may need you at any moment."

"Right," said the young man, readily. "I'll be somewhere about."

Scanlon pushed open Gaffney's door and entered, followed by Ashton-Kirk. The place was crowded; the air was thick with the smoke of poor tobacco; the fox-like young men still made the skilful strokes at the tables, and the walls were lined, as usual, with men who either stared vacantly, or scowled with predatory longing.

Hutchinson, with his striped sleeves and his carefully waved hair, was in the back room engaged with an exceptionally clever gentleman who made shot after shot of almost miraculous character. Ashton-Kirk and Scanlon waited until the game was run through, then the former touched Hutchinson upon the arm.

"Could we have a word with you?" asked the investigator.

"Certainly." Hutchinson smiled agreeably. "Of course."

They took him aside, and Ashton-Kirk looked him steadily in the face while he said:

"We'd like to ask a question or two about a friend of yours—Fenton."

Hutchinson smiled once more, still agreeably, but with a little less genuineness.

"Oh, Joe," said he. "Yes, an old pal of mine. What about him?"

"He comes in to see you quite frequently, doesn't he?"

"Why, yes; pretty often." Hutchinson's hand smoothed at the waves of hair, and through the smile showed evidences of trouble. "But, then, most of the boys come in often. It's quite a hang-out for most of them."

But Ashton-Kirk refused to consider this last.

"Fenton often met people here, I think," said he, his keen eyes still fixed upon the other. "People who wanted to see him in the way of business."

"Why, no," said Hutchinson; "no; I never knew Joe to meet a soul——"

"There was an acquaintance of his named Burton—Tom Burton—sometimes called the Bounder, who called here at times to talk to him." Hutchinson's smile disappeared completely, and a glassy look came into his eyes. "One night, just a week ago, Burton came here; he had some trouble with Fenton; some hours later he was found murdered."

Hutchinson gasped brokenly; reaching out one trembling hand he touched Ashton-Kirk's sleeve.

"I didn't have anything to do with that," he said. "I didn't know anything about it, even, until I saw it in the papers on the day after."

"You do know something about it," said Ashton-Kirk; "so suppose you tell us—but wait," a new thought apparently occurring to him. "First call up Fenton, and get him here; we'll want to talk to him, too."

"But I don't know where he——"

"He's at home," said Ashton-Kirk, briefly; "and there is a telephone in the hall, not a dozen yards from his room."

This precision was too much for Hutchinson; so he went, with scared face, to a telephone at one side, and asked for a number. The talk between the two men had been carried on in low tones; none of the players at the table was aware of its nature. There was a slight delay in procuring the number asked for, but finally a small, inquiring voice was heard.

"I want to speak to Fenton," said Hutchinson. "Get him on the 'phone, will you?"

The small, far-off voice seemed protesting, but Hutchinson urged, persistently:

"Well, what if he is in bed? This is important. Kick on his door; tell him Hutchinson wants to speak to him right away."

There was a delay much longer than the first, then another small voice came over the wire.

"Get a move on you," said Hutchinson. "I want you here right away. A couple of people want to meet you. Important? Of course it is. Would I be dragging you out of bed if it wasn't?"

After a little more of the same style of urging, Hutchinson hung up and turned to Ashton-Kirk.

"He'll be here in ten minutes," said he.

"Very good," said the investigator. The three walked to the out-of-the-way corner they had occupied before, and the speaker went on: "I see you understand this is a serious matter, and so nothing but straightforward answers are expected of you."

"Joe's a pal of mine," said the pool-room manager, "but I don't know nothing about his affairs. If he's in on croaking this guy, I don't know anything about it. I'm on the level, and——"

"We are not greatly interested in that," said Ashton-Kirk. "What we want just now is information as to what happened on the night of the murder."

"I tell you I don't know anything——"

"You were here when the Bounder came to see Fenton, were you not?"

"Yes—I was." The man made the answer with the greatest reluctance, and his manner said plainly that he'd gladly have lied had he been sure as to the extent of his questioner's knowledge. "Joe had been out somewhere, and when he came in he said he had a date with a party. It was then ten o'clock and after. We talked a while, and then this man Burton came in. Joe took him to one side and they began to talk. I didn't pay much attention to them, except that they were having a little argument over something. Then I heard a kind of a smack, and I looked up and saw Joe standing with his hand to his face, and the other fellow turning his back on him just as cool as anything you'd want to put your eyes on. For a second I thought Joe was going to take the thing and say nothing; and then——"

The man paused here, and Ashton-Kirk said:

"And then he was about to draw a revolver, but you stopped him."

Hutchinson stared at the speaker; the desire to deny this was strong in his face, but the certainty of the keen eyes was so great that he said, weakly:

"Joe was only a little wild, that's all. He didn't mean any harm. When I spoke to him, he was as quiet as a baby."

Ashton-Kirk asked a dozen more questions regarding the relationship between the Bounder and Fenton; Hutchinson answered them all hesitatingly and with many qualifications. Finally, the front door swung open and Scanlon, who was watching it, said:

"Here's your man now."

Fenton, frowning and evidently in bad humor, entered the back room. Hutchinson greeted him with:

"Hello, Joe. A couple of people who want to talk to you."

Ashton-Kirk nodded to the broken-nosed man, who looked at him, inquiringly.

"What do you want?" asked he. "It ought to be something bright to rout a man out of bed."

"I'd like to ask you one or two questions," said Ashton-Kirk, smoothly.

"Questions!" Fenton's eyes narrowed. "What kind of questions?"

"About Tom Burton," replied Ashton-Kirk. "I'd like to know what happened after he left this place with you on his track."

Fenton gave a quick, hunted look around; for an instant his eyes rested upon the street door, but Scanlon's big body was between him and it in a twinkling.

"It'll be easier to answer the questions," said Bat, unconcernedly. "We'd get you in a minute or two."

The man's glance went to Hutchinson accusingly, and the manager of the pool room at once began to protest.

"Honest, Joe, I didn't say a word. They came in here and wanted to see you, and I thought it best to get it over with."

"You followed Tom Burton to Stanwick," said Ashton-Kirk. "A person who saw you there has made a direct accusation against you."

The face of the broken-nosed man went white.

"What did they say?" he demanded. "They're liars. What did they say? I didn't do a thing!"

"Well, if you didn't, the best thing to do is to clear yourself of suspicion by telling all you know. I have had it from two different sources that you had business with the Bounder that night. What was its nature?"

Fenton hesitated a moment; his furtive mind was working desperately for a way to avoid admitting light upon his doings; but apparently he could think of none, for he said, slowly:

"I'd been acquainted with Tom Burton for years; sometimes I wouldn't see anything of him for a long time; and then," bitterly, "I'd know he was flush. He never came near me unless he was broke and wanted something done. A couple of weeks ago he showed up and handed me the details of a little game that looked like easy money; I was to work it and we were to split the proceeds, fifty-fifty."

"And this, I suppose, is the matter he came to see you about on the night he was killed?"

"Yes," answered Fenton, and he laughed as he said it. "That's the thing. He came around like a lord and put his mitt out for his cut of the plunder. He had an easy way of doing things—so easy that he often took people by surprise and got by with it. But this time he was in wrong; I'd been dumped by him so often that I was cagy. I'd looked over the game he'd handed me—give it a good, careful look, mind you, and I found there was about twenty per cent. profit and eighty per cent danger. He was to cut the twenty with me, but I was to take all of the eighty."

"Just like them kind of people," said Hutchinson. "They're always looking for somebody to take their chances and feed them pap."

"So I called off on the thing," said Fenton; "and when he came around on the night he said he would, I laid him out—strong—for trying to get me into such a thing. When he found I'd side-stepped him and there was no easy money for him, he pulled back and hit me, and then walked out, expecting to get away with it. I dipped for my gun, I was so sore, but Hutchinson, here, stopped me. Then I knew that to gun him would be a boob play; but I meant to get back at him, so I followed him for a chance to lay him out."

The man paused for a moment or two; the balls clicked about the tables; the clouds of tobacco smoke drifted among the bright white lights overhead; the players talked monotonously among themselves.

"He went to an old-fashioned part of the town," said Fenton, "and before I had a chance had gone into a swell-looking house. He was inside for about half an hour and I waited for him. When he came out he'd no sooner hit the sidewalk than I knew something had happened to him. And it was something good. Before he'd gone in he pulled along pretty slow with his head down; but now he was chipper and feeling good. As he passed where I was hid I heard him laugh. I wondered what it was that was doing it, and in a couple of minutes I found out. He stopped under a light and took something out of his overcoat pocket. I was near enough to get a slant at it, and saw he had a whole handful of diamonds."

Hutchinson drew in a long breath; Ashton-Kirk looked at Scanlon, and that gentleman nodded his satisfaction with the apparent straightforwardness of the story.

"So, after he had flashed a thing like that," said Fenton, "I altered my mind a little; I wouldn't do any strong-arm stuff; I'd try and stand it on the sparks. At first Burton didn't seem to know what to do; he stopped a couple of times as if he was thinking; then he seemed to grab at an idea and started off for the railroad station. He bought a ticket and boarded a local train, and I followed him. He got off at Stanwick and went at once to the house on Duncan Street.

"I walked into the side yard, for it was pretty dark there at first; but then the moon came out from behind some buildings and flooded all over the place, and I had to stick close to the side of the house where the shadows were."

"Didn't you go to the other side at all?" asked Ashton Kirk.

"Yes; a couple of times, but I couldn't stay long, for I was afraid some one would see me. Once I looked in at a window that was lighted up, and there was the Bounder talking to some one, and he was laughing and showing her diamonds."

"Is that all you saw?"

Fenton shook his head.

"No," said he, "it wasn't. I saw a woman a little while later; she was snooping around in the dark, and then she hid behind a kind of a thing that they grow vines over and watched the window."

"What else did you see?" There was a silence after this question; as Fenton squirmed and shifted his eyes like a trapped tiger, Ashton-Kirk went on: "Remember, there has been a direct charge against you—that you killed the man you followed from this place."

"That's a lie," said Fenton. "It's a lie! I didn't! It was that woman killed him. And I saw her do it!"



CHAPTER XXIV

MR. QUIGLEY IS INTERVIEWED

For a moment there was a halt; Ashton-Kirk, Hutchinson and Scanlon looked at the broken-nosed man without speaking, and the heart of the big athlete turned sick at what he had heard.

"You saw her strike the blow?" asked the investigator.

"Yes—with a big brass thing. I thought it was a poker; but the papers said afterward it was a candlestick, and I guess it was."

"What did you do after seeing this?"

"It got into my head that Duncan Street was no healthy place for me, and I'd have jumped out of sight, only for seeing the woman take the diamonds."

"She took them, then?"

"It was the first thing she did. I hung to the outside door waiting for her. But she fooled me. She must have gone out some other way, for I heard the gate click, and saw something in the shadow of the trees on the sidewalk. I hurried out there, but she was gone; I didn't get another peep at her."

Ashton-Kirk smiled.

"That is," said he, quietly, "not until to-day, at Quigley's."

Fenton's lower jaw dropped, and he stared at the investigator vacantly.

"At Quigley's!" said he.

"You saw her come down the hall while you were at the broker's door," said Ashton-Kirk. "And while she bargained with Quigley for a price on a diamond necklace, you were looking in once more. She wore a veil, but veils are not always dependable disguises."

"I don't know how you got that," said Fenton, at last, "but it's true, all right. I spotted her as soon as I saw her; the veil might as well not been there."

Ashton-Kirk drew on his gloves.

"Perhaps to-morrow you'll be called upon to repeat what you've said to-night. So hold yourself ready."

"All right," said the broken-nosed man, sullenly. "You know where to find me, I guess."

"Oh, yes." The investigator turned to Hutchinson, and continued: "I'm obliged to you: you have facilitated matters greatly, and perhaps saved Mr. Fenton from something rather serious. Good-night."

Followed by Scanlon, Ashton-Kirk left the place; a score of yards away the investigator gave a low whistle and a shadow flitted across the street to his side.

"There's a man inside there I want you to keep in sight, Fuller," said the investigator. "The name is Fenton, and he has a broken nose."

"Oh, yes, I know him," said Fuller, readily. "Used to be a tout in the old Sheepshead Bay days."

"Good!" said Ashton-Kirk. "Don't let him slip you. It's important."

Fuller at once started toward Gaffney's; and the investigator and Scanlon made their way out of the back-water into the swirling, high-colored avenue. At a druggist's Ashton-Kirk paused, and the two went in. A telephone book was flipped over until the letter Q was reached.

"Ah, yes," said the investigator. "Mr. Quigley lives at the Doric Apartments." Then as he closed the book: "I trust we shall find him at home."

Scanlon said nothing while the other called a taxi, and when the vehicle arrived, they got in, Ashton-Kirk giving the driver the address wanted.

The Doric Apartments was a new and pretentious place upon a wide street and directly opposite a small, green park. There was a great deal of brass and marble and show about the entrance, and a uniformed attendant announced them by means of a telephone. In a few moments the man turned.

"Mr. Quigley says he does not recognize your names," said he. "And will you kindly state your business."

"Tell him it is very important. That we must see him at once. That it will be to his interest to do so."

The hall porter repeated these words almost as they were given to him, but apparently the man above was not convinced.

"He says that he cannot be seen to-night; that he has retired," spoke the hall man, turning once more. "Can you not call at his office in the morning?"

Ashton-Kirk stepped inside the brass rail.

"If you please," said he to the man as he took possession of the instrument. Then in a sharp, decisive tone he spoke into the transmitter. "Mr. Quigley, I am very sorry to inconvenience you to-night. To put off the matter of which I have to speak until morning would perhaps place you in a rather hard light. The police always make such a muddle of these things."

There was a pause, then came a shrill piping over the wire, startled and inquiring. Scanlon saw the investigator smile.

"Very well," said Ashton-Kirk. "We will come up immediately." Turning to the hall man, he asked: "Where is Mr. Quigley's apartment?"

"Twelfth floor, sir. Take the elevator. Number 1203."

The glittering cage swept smoothly up through the shaft, and at the twelfth floor stopped.

"Third door to your right, suh," said the black man in charge.

Ashton-Kirk was about to knock at the door indicated when it opened, and they saw a man in a dressing gown, a long side growth of hair brushed over a bald head and a white, puffy face.

"Sir," said he, agitatedly, "I really must protest against this sort of thing; it is very late. And I have had a trying day."

"I repeat, Mr. Quigley, I am sorry to disturb you; but, as I have also said, the matter is very pressing. The police——"

"Come in, come in," said Quigley, hastily. "This way, gentlemen. I suppose a man in my way of business must expect certain unforeseen contingencies."

They passed into a room which seemed packed tightly with glittering things; everything gleamed; not a foot of the wall but had a painting, and each held within a gilded frame; small marbles shone as though they had been polished; each piece of furniture had been rubbed to the ultimate; the rugs were of the brightest and the floor threw off a sheen of varnish that was appalling.

"Take chairs," said Mr. Quigley. "Be comfortable, now that you are here." And when he saw them seated, he stood before them, an injured look upon his puffy white face. "The police, you said, sir. Now, just what of the police?"

"About a week ago," said Ashton-Kirk, quietly, "there was a murder done at Stanwick. Perhaps you recall it; the victim was a man of the name of Burton."

"Burton!" Quigley nodded and pursed his lips to hide a tremble that was there. "Yes, I recall that deplorable affair. The son was taken for the crime, I think." He looked at the investigator with uncertainty in his eyes. "But why do you speak of that matter in connection, as it were, with me?"

"By an odd train of circumstances," spoke Ashton-Kirk; "there was a robbery committed at the time of the murder. Some diamonds were taken."

"Diamonds!" Quigley's mouth dropped open, and his pale face became positively ghastly. "Why, in my reading of the newspaper accounts of the case, I saw no mention of a robbery."

Ashton-Kirk nodded.

"That is true, because this phase of the matter is one of which neither the newspapers nor the police know anything as yet." He leaned forward in his chair and continued in his smoothest tones: "Among the things taken was a diamond necklace. And this was sold to you to-day."

"No, no!" protested the man. "It is not true, sir! No, no! I am very careful. I never purchase or lend money on things of which I am not altogether sure."

"The necklace was brought to you to-day between twelve and one o'clock," said the investigator. "It was brought by a woman who wore a veil and you haggled with her as to the money she was to get for it."

"Sir," said Quigley, lifting one hand, "I must insist that you are mistaken; I must insist that this is a——"

But Ashton-Kirk stopped him.

"When I had the man send up my name a while ago," said the investigator, "you replied that you did not know me. Surely, Mr. Quigley, your memory is much better than that. I would hesitate to accuse a man in your line of effort of being so forgetful. Only three years ago I transacted a little business with you—the matter of Senator Donaldson's collection of Revolutionary autographs. They had been taken by his younger son—since dead—and sold to you. If it had not been that the Senator was anxious to hush the matter up, you would have had some trouble on your hands, Mr. Quigley."

The broker choked and gasped, and when he came out of this his whole manner had undergone a change.

"Mr. Ashton-Kirk," said he, "I beg your pardon. I do recognize you now. But, sir, you had entirely slipped my memory; if you had not mentioned that unfortunate Donaldson episode I would not have recalled you. That was one of those things in which even a very honest man might become involved. I was deceived in that case, and——"

"Let us agree, then, that you were deceived. And that being so, is it not possible that it might have happened again?"

Reluctantly, Quigley agreed that this was so.

"However," said he, "I take all precautions. I ask questions; I delve into the history of every valuable thing offered me. But I admit that I have been misled once or twice, in spite of all I could do."

"Suppose," said Ashton-Kirk, "you allow us a look at the necklace and——"

"But it is not here!" exclaimed Quigley. "It is at my office, locked away in the safe."

"Very well," said Ashton-Kirk. "We have a cab outside. Let us go to your office."

"It is late," expostulated the broker. "I had retired for the night. Why not morning, sir? The morning will find us fresh and wakeful, and we can talk things over at our leisure."

"The morning has one drawback," said Ashton-Kirk. "The police may, in the interim, learn something; and if you are not arrayed on the side of the law by the time they reach you, you may be decidedly inconvenienced, not only in this matter, but in others as well."

This seemed powerfully to impress Mr. Quigley.

"I shall do as you request, Mr. Ashton-Kirk," said he. "I put myself entirely in your hands. If you will give me a few moments to dress I will go with you to my place of business, and permit you to examine the necklace. I am always ready to demonstrate my integrity; no one has ever found me unwilling to comply with every requirement of a reputable business man."

With that Mr. Quigley disappeared, and within fifteen minutes he emerged from the rooms beyond fully dressed, including a most respectable top hat; they descended and got into a cab, and in a little while brought up at the Chandler Building, where the broker had his office.

A night man sleepily ran them up to the required floor, and Quigley unlocked his office door.

"Now, gentlemen," said he, "it is fortunate that I still have what you desire to see here in the office. I have a very good safe, but never trust anything to it of extreme value unless I am compelled to do so. This necklace came too late for me to place it in the vault I use for such things, so I had to keep it here overnight."



He turned the knob of a formidable looking safe until he had effected the proper combination; then the door swung open. The inner door was then unlocked and Quigley pulled out a drawer; from this he took a magnificent necklace of diamonds which gleamed resplendently under the lights.

"This is the article you spoke of," said he. "Quite handsome. But I feel sure that it is in no way connected with the unhappy affair at Stanwick."

Ashton-Kirk took the jewels in his hand and examined them keenly. Then he held them out to Scanlon.

"What do you think?" he asked. "I have only a description to go by, but you must have seen the stones frequently at close hand. Are they the same?"

Scanlon needed only one glance.

"They are," returned he; "I'd know this necklace among a thousand."

"The lady who left them with me," said Quigley, still hopeful, "was quite respectable. I'd vouch for that at any time. She is a widow and was once in good circumstances."

"You know her, then?" said Ashton-Kirk.

"Oh, yes; we have had a number of small——" But here the man paused abruptly; then he began a fit of coughing which was unquestionably intended to cover the break. "Oh, yes," he resumed, "I know her quite well."

"You were about to say," spoke Ashton-Kirk, coolly, "that you have had a number of small transactions with her. How recent were these?"

Quigley blew his nose violently and cleared his throat, as though the coughing spell had left him in an obstructed condition.

"Why," he gasped, trying to assume a most confidential manner, "that would be rather difficult to say. You see, I keep a very neglectful run of these people, and my memory is really very poor."

"The necklace was not the only jewel stolen at Stanwick," said Ashton-Kirk, quietly. "There were a number of other pieces, and I must really insist that you cudgel your mind for the facts. You must have entries somewhere in your books. I am asking this as a favor; of course, if the police were requested to appear in the matter they would use methods entirely different from——"

"It is barely possible that my clerk has some record of these things," said Quigley, hastily. "Just one moment, please, and I will ascertain."

He went into an inner office, took a book from a desk drawer and began turning the leaves with a moistened thumb. Scanlon, catching the eye of the investigator, winked knowingly.

"Why, to be sure," said Quigley. "Of course! Here it is, fortunately. She has been in the office three times in the past week."

Ashton-Kirk stepped behind the counter and into the inner office, and coolly looked over the broker's shoulder.

"Do you see?" asked Quigley. "Right here. There are three rings in one item; and there is a brooch in another. And then, of course, the necklace."

Ashton-Kirk examined the entries and made some memoranda in a small book; then he began asking some questions in a voice so low that Scanlon caught only a word here and there. He recognized "woman," also "veil," and in another place "this afternoon." It were as though Ashton-Kirk were urging the man to accompany him somewhere, which Quigley seemed loth to do. Then the investigator took something from his pocket and showed it to the other. Bat caught a flash of it; it was a photograph—of Nora Cavanaugh, and the broker was now nodding his head eagerly as he gazed at it.

"They're going to Nora's," was what flashed through Bat's brain. "This hound of a pawn-broker'll try and put something on her whether it's true or not." His mind seethed with this for a moment, and then came another idea. "But they'll not take her by surprise; I'll get there before them, and tell her."

And silently Mr. Scanlon slipped through the hall door and was gone.



CHAPTER XXV

NORA TALKS AND SCANLON LISTENS

As Bat Scanlon stepped out of the street car which took him to Nora Cavanaugh's house, he looked at his watch. It was almost midnight.

"She'll have had time to get home," he said to himself, "but maybe it'll be too late to see her."

But he set his jaw at this thought, and shook his head with a bull-like motion. He sprang up the steps and pulled at the bell viciously. To his surprise the door opened at once, and he saw Nora in her coat and furs, a veil over her face, standing in the hall.

"Bat!" she said, and stood staring at him.

"Just come in?" he asked.

"No," was the answer. "I—I——"

"Just going out, then. I see."

There was something in his manner and tone which caused her to look at him steadily. Then with a little gesture she said:

"Will you come in?"

He entered and she closed the door; as he stood there turning his hat about in his hands, he looked very big and stubborn—and, if you understood him very well, as Nora did—very much afraid.

"It is late," she said. "Is anything wrong?"

"There will be," said Bat "There will be unless something is done to head it off."

Without a word she led the way into a room at one side; and after they had sat down, she asked:

"And now, what is it?"

"I've just been with Ashton-Kirk to see a man of the name of Quigley—a sort of pawnbroker." His eyes were upon her, but she continued to regard him steadily without any change of expression. "A necklace had been taken to him to-day by a woman—a diamond necklace." Her eyes wavered at this, and an expression of fear came into her face. There was a pause, and then Bat leaned forward and said in a lowered voice: "What made you say that you had put your jewels away in a vault?"

She arose and went to his side.

"Bat," she said, "I felt sure your friend Mr. Ashton-Kirk would find me out. I knew from the first that I was not cunning enough to conceal anything from him."

"Nora," said Scanlon, as he, too, arose, "why did you try?" Again there was a pause, and again the big athlete broke the silence. "As I have told you more than once," said he, "I believe in you; nothing can shake me from that. There are a great many things you have said and done that I do not understand; others of them I see through, though you did not intend that I should. Why was all this? Why didn't you tell me the facts as they stood?"

"Bat," she said, "I didn't dare; I was afraid."

"Afraid? Of what?" He looked down at her; her face was pale; her gloved hands were clasped, tremblingly. "That night when Tom Burton came here, he struck you. We saw the mark, but you said it was caused by something else. He also stole your jewels, but you said nothing. Nora, was there any good reason why you should have misled us like that?"

She reached out and touched his arm.

"I can see," she said, "that it will be useless to carry the thing any further. I did think I could manage it myself, but I see now that it was hopeless from the start. Will you sit down?" There was a certain sweet humbleness in her voice which turned the big man's heart to water. "I'll tell you everything now, and so you may judge me for yourself."

Once more they sat down; Nora drew the veil still further from her face and began to speak in a low voice, but steadily, and with no hesitation.

"Tom Burton did strike me that night, and I would not tell the truth about it, Bat, because I was ashamed. I could not bring myself to admit that the man I had chosen for my husband would do such a thing. Other misdoings of his I could speak of—but that one I felt I must always keep to myself. His taking of my jewels I would not have held from you if I had not been afraid—afraid as I never was before."

"Of what?" asked Scanlon.

"Tom Burton was killed in his son's house; I knew that son; I knew what he had suffered all his life because of his father. I had heard the story in all its pitiful details. As a child he had been affronted and mishandled—as a boy—as a young man. He could never forget what his mother had been forced to endure; in his mind was always the fact that his sister was an invalid, perhaps for life, owing to the poverty brought on them by their father's neglect. With all this before me, can you wonder that I was afraid—afraid that the boy, in a moment of madness, had struck his father down?"

Bat drew in a long breath; in it there was a vast relief and a certain wonder.

"No," said he. "No; did you think that?"

"The idea was agonizing, and I made up my mind to do all I could to save him; that is why I appealed to you to get me all the intimate details. Then he was arrested; the body had been examined by the coroner, but no word was said of my jewels. It was then that a second thought came to me; suppose the murder had not been done, after all, in a sudden mounting of fury? Suppose the boy had seen the diamonds and had been tempted? Suppose he had killed Tom Burton in order to get possession of them? I was appalled at the notion, which with each moment became more and more a conviction. But I still held to the resolve to help him. What if he had done the thing? Was it altogether his fault? Was it not a part of an inheritance from a tainted father?

"So I said nothing of my loss of the jewels; the dread was in me that if the facts concerning them were known, suspicion would fall upon him—they might discover the stolen things on him and so he would lose his life, as well as his life's happiness, because of that man. I felt that no part of the truth must come out, that I must not even tell of my husband's visit to me that night; and when, in talking with you at your office, I permitted the fact to slip, I was startled."

"I remember that you were," said Bat. "And I wondered what it meant." He sat for a space and looked at her; and then, as she said nothing more, he went on: "You do not know it, but for days things fell in such combinations that more than once it looked as though you would be accused."

"Bat!" She cried out his name, frightened, and her wide brown eyes opened to their fullest extent.

"Even an hour ago I saw and heard some things which seemed to point to you. Maybe if my nerves weren't keyed up as they are I wouldn't have thought so. But, anyway, I did, and that's what brought me here."

"But surely," and her voice was broken by the shortness of her breathing, "surely you never thought this of me?"

But Bat did not deny it.

"What else was I to do when things piled up as they did? Some of them I don't understand at this minute, and maybe I'll never understand them. But there are others," and he looked at her with frank inquiry in his face, "that you can explain; and, Nora, I'm looking to you to do it."

And with that he told her of the things he had heard from Big Slim and of those he had seen at Bohlmier's hotel. She listened with many little gasps and surprised gestures.

"To think of that man being so near to me that night," she said, when he had done, "and watching me with such an intent. And now, poor Bat," with a little sound in her voice which was part a sob and part a laugh, "because he saw so much and understood so little, and told it all to you, I will have to speak of something I never expected to make known to any one. You know how I have always dreaded and detested divorce; how the thought of it almost sickened me? Well, Bat, two years ago I felt I could endure Tom Burton no longer, and had all the preliminary papers for a proceeding made out."

"What!" said Scanlon. "You, Nora!"

"I did. But then all my old feeling against the thing overtook me, and I laid the papers away in a little silver box which I kept in a drawer in my room. When Tom Burton struck and robbed me that night, I was in a perfect whirl of feeling. I resolved to be free of him forever. And I'd do it at once. What I was seen to take from the drawer, Bat, was the little silver box holding those papers; I rushed from the house meaning to go to my lawyer. And I was a half dozen blocks away when I came out of the state I was in, realized the hour and the impossibility of the whole situation, and returned home."

"That's it," said Bat, with the sigh of a man relieved of a heavy burden. "That's it. I might have known that it would be something of that sort. Then you did not go to Stanwick at all that night?"

"I never dreamed of such a thing. And when I first heard of this man you call Big Slim," went on Nora, "it was in a letter he wrote me after the murder, and of which he spoke guardedly. I felt that this was a clue that if followed I might be able to show poor Frank Burton to be innocent after all. So I did what I otherwise would never have done; I went to the place mentioned, which was the hotel kept by that fiendish old man Bohlmier."

"What did they want?"

"It was blackmail. They, too, fancied I was at Stanwick that night. They knew about the diamonds, though I did not then know how they came by the information. They thought to frighten me into paying a sum of money. The tall man's threat was of the police whom he said would be sure to connect me with the crime. But I laughed at him, and dared him to do anything he had in mind. The old man, I think, would have threatened my life. I had heard some of his talk in the next room; that is why I took up the revolver from the table; and when I listened at the wall it was to hear what more he might say."

"They keep your house under watch," said Scanlon.

"I know; I see them loitering in the street almost constantly. And they write me threatening letters. But I've never been afraid of them until last night. After you had gone—oh, please, Bat, forgive me for keeping it from you, when you were so worried for my sake and so good to me—but I went to Stanwick; I felt that I had to—there was something I must know.

"These men followed me, Bat; I did not know it until I had left the house after my visit. Then the old man came up to me in the dark. He drew out a knife; I saw it quite plainly somehow; and then some one seized him, and——" She stopped and looked at the big athlete intently; the expression upon his face was one not to be mistaken. "It was you," she said. "Bat, it was you."

He told her how he came to be there and also of what he saw afterward—of how Mary Burton went so strangely through the house, and of the words of the old man who scouted the idea of the girl being ill, and who had protested he had seen her leave the house more than once since the crime in a sort of disguise. As Nora listened to this, her face grew rigid with apprehension.

"When you returned from your first visit to Stanwick," she said, after he had finished, "and told me of the way young Frank Burton acted and spoke while being examined by the police, an idea came into my mind which I at once put away from me. I knew Mary Burton, because of her illness, had moments in which she was not quite herself. Suppose it were not Frank after all who did the thing I so feared—suppose it were she?"

"Ah!" said Scanlon. "You got that, too, did you?"

"But I refused to consider it. The idea of Frank was bad enough, but that of Mary was so much worse that I could not bear it. But when the papers came out saying that a woman was suspected I could bear it no longer; I got permission to see Frank and told him of what was being said. He denied it furiously, and it was then I knew he, too, though neither of us mentioned her name, believed his sister guilty. He had taken suspicion and imprisonment to attract the attention of the police from her; and now he was ready to confess the crime if his other sacrifices failed."

Bat Scanlon looked at her and marveled how he had ever permitted the real truth behind this situation to escape him as it had; and as he looked, little incidents, fragments of conversations came to him, and he realized that his state of mind had not been so extraordinary after all.

"Tell me," said he, the talk between Ashton-Kirk and Burgess strong in his mind—a conversation which seemed to point so directly toward Nora, "has Mary Burton ever traveled much? Has she ever held positions of any kind in other cities?"

"There have been periods when she has been almost well," said Nora. "And she has been in other cities at these times and perhaps has had employment."

"By George!" said Bat, with a sigh, "things do work out queerly. I was almost sure that you were——" But he stopped there. The scene in Quigley's office, an hour before, suddenly flared up in his mind, vividly. "I guess," he went on, "it's all up with that poor thing, in spite of her brother and everything else. Ashton-Kirk's hard to fool, and he must have had an eye on her and been tracing her doings from the first. He knows she's been selling the diamonds, and he has a witness who says he saw her strike the blow that did for her father. And just before I left I heard him planning for a little journey somewhere; at first I thought it was here, and so I came to warn you. But I see it was Stanwick he had in view. He'll take the police, maybe, and arrest Mary Burton."

"Oh, no, no!" Nora was standing wide-eyed before him. "Oh, no! If I had reason to try and protect the brother, I have a double reason for protecting her, for she has suffered even more and is much more helpless." She stood looking at him for an instant and then went on: "Bat, you came here, in spite of your friendship for Ashton-Kirk, to warn me of what you thought a danger; will you go with me to warn Mary Burton of what you know is one?"

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, slowly:

"I haven't the same reason in her case, Nora; but if you ask me to do it, why, I will."

"I was about to go to her as you rang the bell," she said. "I don't know why, but just felt that I had to. I ask you to come with me," and held out her hand.

He grasped this eagerly, and then without another word they were upon the street and hurrying away through the night.



CHAPTER XXVI

CONCLUSION

Scanlon and Nora Cavanaugh were hurrying through the vast waiting-room at the railroad station when the big athlete felt a touch upon his arm.

"Not that way, old chap," said a voice at his side.

It was Ashton-Kirk, smiling and unruffled, and near by stood the broker, Quigley. Nora gave a gasp of despair, and Scanlon felt her cling to him, tremblingly.

"Fenton is outside there," resumed the investigator, nodding his head toward the train shed. "I have a notion that he's on his way to Stanwick. If you go out, he'll see you."

Bat gave a sigh of relief; after all, his own mission and that of Nora was not suspected.

"Is Fuller trailing him?" he asked.

"Yes; he just gave me the word as he passed."

Quigley, as he stood waiting, had a most uncomfortable expression upon his face; he stood first upon one foot and then upon the other; evidently what was in prospect for him was not at all to his liking.

"Mr. Quigley and myself had intended taking the train for Stanwick," said Ashton-Kirk. "But I think now that we'd better not."

"Not go?" It was Nora who spoke, and there was eagerness in her voice.

"Not by train," smiled the investigator.

"What's your idea of going there to-night?" asked Bat, with an assumption of ease.

"Why, I might ask you that, old chap," said the other, thoughtfully, "but I won't. But my errand is no secret. It's a little matter of identification."

At this moment Quigley advanced, and with a bow to Nora said:

"If I have been an innocent instrument—perfectly innocent, mind you—in the hands of a designing person, Miss Cavanaugh, I beg your pardon. I was assured that the jewels were honestly come by; and when Mr. Ashton-Kirk told me a while ago that they were really your property, I immediately placed myself in his hands, most anxious that complete justice should be done."

Nora made a vague answer to this, for at the moment she was watching the investigator, who stood with narrowed eyes, a thoughtful wrinkle between his brows, and one hand stroking his chin. And as she watched him, he spoke to Scanlon.

"It may be," said he, and there was a slow, curious smile about the corners of his mouth, "that Fenton's blundering into my plans will not be serious, after all. Indeed, it may be turned to account." The singular eyes went to the girl. "You are interested in this case, Miss Cavanaugh, and so is Scanlon. Why not go with Mr. Quigley and myself, and witness its solution."

"Fenton will spot us," said Scanlon. He had still a hope of doing what he and Nora had set out to do, and the pallor of her beautiful face and the misery in her eyes urged him to lose no chance. Once out of sight of the keen eyes of the investigator, he and the girl could take a taxi and make for Stanwick with all speed.

"Not if we go by motor," said Ashton-Kirk, in answer to his objections. "We can do that and make as good time as the local."

"Taxicabs are so small," said Nora, as they descended a long flight of steps to the street. "Four will crowd one so."

In her mind was the same thought as in that of Bat's. Once let them divide into two parties—she and Scanlon making one—and she was quite sure that their cab would be the first at No. 620 Duncan Street. But the investigator dashed this hope by leading the way, when they reached the street, to where some touring cars were to hire near the station.

"These," said he, quietly, "will be comfortable."

There was a businesslike young man in charge of the first of the cars, and he made his bargain, cranked his engine, received his orders and started off in an amazingly brief time. Inside of twenty minutes the suburbs, with their long rows of villa-like buildings, and their wide and smoothly paved streets, began to swing past them.

"I have your interest to thank, Miss Cavanaugh," said Ashton-Kirk, "for bringing this case to my attention—as a participant, that is. There has been a simplicity in it which has attracted me from the start, and, at the same time, a curious interweaving of threads which, under almost any other set of circumstances, would have been as wide apart as the poles. Scanlon has gone partly over the route with me, and because of this interweaving I have had considerable trouble in preventing his jumping at conclusions—in taking appearance for granted without waiting for proof. I am not sure how far I kept him from error," with a nod and a laugh, "for several times I believe he has gone the length of suspecting you."

Nora made no reply to this, but Scanlon said:

"I have believed she did it; everything pointed that way. But I never blamed her, for she had cause enough, even for that."

Ashton-Kirk nodded gravely.

"Cause, yes," said he. "And that is the heart-breaking thing connected with crime of a certain sort. Sometimes the criminal is much more innocent than the victim." He sat thoughtful for a space, while the car bounded forward over the well-kept roads; then he resumed: "I could see, Scanlon, where and how your thoughts flowed as they did; but I could do nothing more at the time than tell you to make no snap judgments. The agitation of Miss Cavanaugh caught your attention in the first place, and so when we saw a woman's footprints by the rose arbor you concluded they were hers; we found a small revolver by the fence; that also made you think of her. When, by means of the particle of mortar on the bar of the cellar grating at Stanwick, I discovered that the same person who had prowled about the lawn on the night of the murder had scaled the scaffolding outside Miss Cavanaugh's window, you fancied this to be almost positive proof. What you saw at Bohlmier's hotel, and the story told you by Big Slim, made it almost damning.

"If you had waited, as a man more experienced in such things would have done," and the investigator smiled at his friend, "you would have saved yourself a state of mind. The prints at the rose arbor were made by a certain sort of shoe—a kind which I felt sure Miss Cavanaugh never wore. Later, in a second visit which I paid to No. 620 Duncan Street, I found the shoes which made the prints, and still with particles of soil clinging to them."

Bat caught a little moan from Nora, and he held her cold, limp hand in his strong, warm one.

"You're sure of that?" said he, to Ashton-Kirk.

"Quite positive. And the matter of the little revolver picked up on the lawn: that belonged to Fenton; he probably dropped it in scaling the fence. By means of a strong glass I saw a number scratched on the metal of the butt. I at once knew this to be a pawnbroker's mark. Fuller, inside three hours, had located the pawnbroker, and the records of the place showed the weapon had been sold to Fenton only a little while before."

"Good work!" admired Bat. "Nice!"

"And speaking of Fenton," went on Ashton-Kirk, "it rather puzzled me at first how he had been over the ground about the house and left no trace. But a little attention and look at his feet showed me that I had seen his tracks all over one side of the lawn—the ones of the man walking on his toes—and that I had supposed them to be those of Big Slim before he put on his 'creepers.'"

"Tell me," said Scanlon, "have you ever, in the course of this affair, believed young Frank Burton guilty?"

"At first I did not know. But after my second visit to Duncan Street, and a little talk with the colored maid, who is an honest imaginative soul, I was convinced that he was innocent."

"What did the maid tell you?" asked Bat.

"After the Bounder had been admitted to the house that night, she had gone back to the kitchen to her work. She heard Frank come in, but she did not catch anything of the altercation which followed. A little later, her duties finished, she started for her room which was at the top of the house. As she passed along the hall, on the second floor, she noticed the door of the bath room standing open and remembered she had not supplied it with fresh towels. The linen closet is in a room at the far end of the hall; she went there and procured what she wanted, and as she came into the hall once more she saw young Frank Burton come quickly out of his room, stand at the head of the stairway for a moment as though listening, and then hurry down to the floor below."

"That must have been after he had taken his sister to her room," said Scanlon.

But Ashton-Kirk shook his head.

"No; a few minutes later the maid saw him ascend the stairs once more, and the sister was with him then."

"But," cried Nora, a vague fear as to what this might lead to in her mind, "when the maid was questioned by the coroner's physician she said——"

But the investigator stopped her.

"As I have said, the maid is an altogether unimaginative creature, and it never occurred to her that anything short of blows or outcries could have anything to do with the crime. It was plain to me, as I talked to her, that she had even then no notion of the importance of what she was saying. She was simply answering questions. However, added to what the nurse had told Dr. Shower, her information was vital, indeed. Miss Wheeler had gone into the kitchen, if you recall her testimony, at a time when the three Burtons, father, son and daughter, were in the sitting-room. She said she had gone to tell the maid she might go to bed, and found she had already gone; also she remained in the kitchen for a space, attending to some duties of her own.