He was about to leave the room when, for the first time, he looked the situation squarely in the face and made an important acknowledgment to himself. There had been in his mind, ever since that train had pulled out of Furmville with George's rattling whisper still sounding in his ear, the desire and the plan to safeguard George. He had felt, on this trip, that, if his theory about the case broke down, it might be advisable, even necessary, to produce all the evidence possible to shield his friend either from ugly gossip or from the down-right charge of murder. He did not believe for a moment that Withers was guilty.

If things went wrong in the next eight or ten hours, if it was proved that Morley had nothing to do with the murder, the thing he wanted above all else was a story from Morley that he, Morley, had seen the struggle in front of No. 5 as Withers had described it. Somehow, that story about the struggle had struck him as the weakest link in George's whole story.

He had resolutely refused to consider it up to now, but he no longer could dodge it. He had come to Washington to catch the criminal. But he also had come with the subconscious plan of getting at anything that would help Withers.

He stood for an instant, jangling the room key in his hand. A frown drew his brows together. The frown deepened. He unlocked the door, went back into the room, and put down his cane, leaning it against the wall near the bureau.

He reached the lobby in time to hear a callboy paging him. There was a telegram for him. It read:

"Mr. S. S. Braceway, Willard Hotel, Washington, D. C.

"Here.

(Signed) "Frank Abrahamson."

"What the devil does he mean?" he asked himself several times. "What's this 'here' about?"

He thought a long time before he remembered having asked the Furmville pawn broker to try to recall where he had seen the bearded man in another disguise, a disguise which, apparently, had consisted of nothing but a black moustache and bushy eyebrows. And Abrahamson had promised to wire him if he did remember. The "here" meant it was in Furmville that he had seen the moustached man.

He went to the telegraph desk and wrote out a message:

"Mr. Frank Abrahamson, 329 College Street, Furmville, N. C.

"Silence.

(Signed) "Braceway."

"One-word telegrams!" he smiled grimly. "Thrifty fellows, these chosen people."

He found the telephone booths and called up Golson.

"Got anything from Baltimore?" he inquired.

"Just been talking to Delaney on long-distance," Golson answered without enthusiasm.

"Well! What is it?"

"Your man gave him the slip a quarter of an hour ago, and he wants——"

"Gave him the slip!" shouted Braceway. "What are you talking about?"

"I don't like it any more than you do," snapped Golson. "But that's what happened: gave him the slip."

"How?"

"I didn't get that exactly. Delaney merely said he lost him in the hotel. Your man was evidently waiting there for a message or phone call. If he received it, Delaney was fooled. Anyway, he's gone now; and Delaney wants to know what he's to do. What'll I tell him?"

"Tell him to go to hell!" Braceway said hotly. "No! Tell him to go back to Eidstein's and wait there until Morley shows up. That's his only chance to pick him up again."

"O.K.," growled Golson.

"Say! Put somebody on the job of watching for the incoming trains from Baltimore, will you? Right away?"

"Platt's just come into the office. I'll send him to the station at once."

"What time did Delaney lose sight of Morley?"

"Twelve forty-five."

Braceway hung up the receiver and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past one. He had fifty minutes to kill before keeping an appointment he had made with Major Ross, chief of the Washington police.

After a quick lunch, he strolled over to the news-stand and picked up the early edition of an afternoon paper.

The first headlines he saw were:

STOLEN GEMS FOUND IN SUSPECT'S YARD

Under these lines was a dispatch from Furmville giving the information that plain-clothes men of the Furmville police force had discovered the emerald-and-diamond lavalliere worn by Mrs. Enid Fulton Withers the night she was murdered. The jewelry had been found in the yard of the house where Perry Carpenter had lived. The lavaliere was concealed in tall grass immediately beneath the window of Carpenter's room, and thus had at first escaped the eyes of the police. When found, it was intact except for the six links that had been broken from the chain and dropped the night of the murder.

Braceway threw down the paper and went to the Pennsylvania Avenue door.

"Damn!" he addressed mentally the top of the Washington monument. "More grist for Bristow's mill! I'm not crazy, am I? I'm not that crazy, that's sure!"

He set out to keep his appointment with Major Ross. After all, he felt reasonably sure of himself, and he had made up his mind to carry things through as he originally had intended. His shoulders were well back, his step elastic and quick. He flung off discouragement as if it had been an over-coat too warm for that weather.

He would not permit Delaney's fiasco to annoy him. The Baltimore police had been tipped to watch the pawnshops; Delaney probably would pick Morley up again; and there was the extra man yet to be heard from. Besides, Morley would break down and confess cleanly after his fright on being arrested. Things were not so bad after all.



CHAPTER XXI

BRISTOW SOLVES A PROBLEM

Mr. Beale and Mr. Jones were, so far as their exteriors showed, nearly back to the normal iciness of their every-day appearance when Braceway found them in the president's office a few minutes after half-past five. He did not have to ask what they had discovered; their faces were frank confessions. He dropped into a chair and smiled.

"How much?"

Mr. Beale cleared his throat and moved his lips deliberately one against the other.

"Before I say anything else, Mr.—er—Braceway, I want to express to you not only my own gratitude but that of all the officers and directors of the Anderson National. You have, it seems, saved us from great trouble. As things are, they are bad enough. But you have enabled us to put our fingers on the—ah—situation almost in time."

He glanced at Jones.

"Briefly," the vice-president took up the statement, "it has been established, thus far, that Morley has stolen from the Anderson National the—"

Mr. Beale's composure broke down at this. He interrupted the subordinate's calm explanation:

"Stolen from the Anderson National! Think of that, sir! Of all the outrageous things, of all the unqualifiedly and absolutely incredible things! We have in our bank, on our payrolls, a thief, an unmitigated scoundrel!" He pushed back his chair and drummed on his knees. "We find that one of his thefts was seven hundred dollars, and another five hundred. We—I—trusted him, trusted him! And with what result?"

He slid his chair forward and bruised his fist by striking the desk with all his strength.

"And the crudity of his methods! Preposterous! The old trick of entries in pass-books and no entries in the records! He chose, for his own safety, depositors who carried large balances and were not apt to draw out anywhere near their total balance. It's the most abominable——"

Between the outbursts of the president and the cold, lifeless words of the vice-president, Braceway managed to elicit these facts: they expected to uncover more than the $1,200 shortage already established; when they could examine all the pass-books now out of the bank, the total would undoubtedly be found much larger; they demanded Morley's arrest at once; in fact, if the law had allowed it, they would have sent him to the scaffold within the next hour.

"Now," the detective reminded them, "he's also under suspicion of murder."

"My God!" spluttered Beale. "What do we care about murder? Hasn't he tried to murder this bank? Hasn't he assassinated, so far as he could, its good name? Get him! Put him behind the bars!"

At last they agreed to Braceway's plan: Morley was to be arrested by one of Major Ross' plain-clothes men when he stepped off the train from Baltimore. It was to be done quietly, so that the news of it would not be in the morning's papers.

He was then to be taken to one of the outlying police stations for the sake of privacy, was to be told that he was charged with embezzlement; and then, having been frightened by the arrest, he would be compelled to undergo the cross-examination of Braceway and Bristow, who wanted to prove or disprove his connection with the murder in Furmville.

Braceway returned to the hotel to await a report from either Major Ross or Delaney.

Delaney came into the lobby and joined him. They went straight to Braceway's room.

"We caught the five o'clock in Baltimore and got here a little before six," the big man started his story. "One of the men from headquarters stepped up to him and arrested him. I figured you had arranged for it, so I beat it up here."

"What happened in Baltimore?" asked Braceway in a tone so friendly that it dissipated much of the other's embarrassment.

"I declare, Mr. Braceway," he said humbly, "I don't know how it happened. I never had such a thing hit me before. But I lost him slick as a whistle. I was in the bar of the hotel, and he was sitting in the lobby. I had my eye right on him, and he had no idea I was following him. Then, all at once, after I'd turned to the barkeeper just long enough to order a soft drink, I looked around, and he was gone. I combed the house from top to bottom, but it was no use. He had ducked me clean."

"What time was that?"

"Twelve-forty-five."

"And then what?"

"The chief gave me your message, and I went back to keep a look on Eidstein's place. I didn't think he'd show there again, but he did—at four o'clock and stayed there almost half an hour. After that, he went to the station, me right after him. We both caught the five o'clock for Washington."

"Did you talk with Eidstein?"

"No, sir; had no orders. But he's no loan-shark, and no fence. Eidstein's on the level. We know all about him."

"How did Morley look when he showed up there the second time?"

"Done up, sir, fagged out. That's what makes me uneasy. He'd been up to something that shook him, something that rattled his teeth. He looked it."

"Pawning something, perhaps?"

"That's just it—just the way I figured it—something he knew was risky—something that made him sweat blood."

"Well, it's all right," Braceway concluded. "There's nothing for you to worry about. It may be that losing him was the best thing you ever did. I'm not sure, but it may turn out so."

Delaney, greatly relieved, thanked him and left.

Braceway hurried to the sick man's room and, having been ushered in by Miss Martin, found him, fully dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed. He was still pale and looked tired, but his voice was strong. He was setting down a half-empty glass of water on a tray near the bed, and his hand, although it wavered a little, had lost the helpless tremulousness Braceway had noticed at noon.

"Hello!" said the visitor. "You're a wonder! I expected to find you prostrated."

"Oh, no," Bristow answered quietly. "I knew the rest and sleep would bring me around all right, and Miss Martin has given me a twentieth of a grain of strychnine. What's the news?"

"I'll sketch it to you. But how about dinner?"

"I've arranged for us to have it up here, if you don't mind?"

Braceway agreed, and Miss Martin straightened up the other room, where the meal was served.

Bristow, restricting himself to clam broth, crackers, and coffee, heard the story of the day's developments with profound interest. Except for the little tremor in his fingers, there was no sign that he had been ill a few hours earlier. Not a detail escaped him. The whole thing was photographed on his mind, even the hours and minutes of the time at which this or that had occurred.

"So," concluded Braceway, "you can see why I feel pretty fine! Morley's a thief, as I'd believed all along. The motive for the murder is established, particularly when you remember that Miss Fulton, who had been advancing him money, was prevented by her sister from doing so any further."

"No; I can't see that," objected Bristow. "A motive? Yes; but not a motive for murder. So far as I can size it up, he wanted to steal more money, and that's all. It's a far cry between theft and murder."

"You stick to your old theory, the negro's guilt?"

"Naturally. There you have the motive and the murder—the proof that he said he would rob, and the indisputable evidence that he did rob and kill. Why, he brought away with him particles of the victim's body! What more do you want?"

For a long moment their glances interlocked and held. In a sharp, intuitive way Braceway felt that Bristow suspected his concern about George Withers. He did not know why he suspected it, but he did. He was convinced that the other, with his darting, analytical mind, had gone to the secret unerringly.

"Oh, well," he laughed, rising from the table, "if you're so fond of your own ideas, Bristow, you won't be of much use to me in questioning Morley tonight."

"On the contrary," the other returned quickly, "I'm just as anxious as you are to get the truth out of him. As long as one man's story is left vague and indefinite, just that long you run the risk of somebody's coming forward with facts or conjectures to overthrow the theory you've advanced. It applies to my idea as well as to yours."

"No doubt."

"You know as well as I do," the lame man continued, "that, if Perry Carpenter isn't guilty, the next one to suspect logically is Withers."

"What makes you say that?" The question was put sharply.

"I've two reasons. In the first place, the facts and Withers' own story; in the second, common sense."

The telephone rang. When Bristow answered it, a man's voice asked for Braceway. Major Ross himself was on the wire.

"I had the man in Baltimore interviewed," he reported. "Here is his story in a few words: some years ago Morley's father bought from his shop a pair of earrings, each one set with an unusually valuable pigeon's-blood ruby, and gave them to Mrs. Morley. Young Morley, now in trouble, took him this morning the two stones and asked him to buy them back. He explained that it must be done secretly because he might be suspected of having been implicated in a murder.

"He denied any guilt, but said it would embarrass him if the deal became known. The owner of the shop—you understand who—could not buy them back, but promised to raise money on them, something he'd never done before. He was greatly affected by Morley's grief and despair. He says the rubies are the ones he sold years ago."

"Did he raise the money?"

"He tried, but couldn't get the sum Morley wanted, seven hundred dollars. Finally, he did advance it from his own pocket."

"And the stones? How do they compare with those on the list of Withers' stuff?"

"Identical."

"All right; thanks. We'll see you at eight."

Braceway repeated the report to Bristow, eliciting the comment:

"Is somebody trying to make fun of us—or what is it? If those rubies belonged to Mrs. Withers, one thing at least is certain: Morley was in the bungalow the night of the murder, and after the murder had been committed. Miss Fulton distinctly told me the only jewelry that had ever passed between her and Morley was the ring found in his room in the Brevord that morning."

Braceway laughed aloud.

"At last," he said, "You're beginning to see the light—or to appreciate the jungle we're running around in."

He had arranged for them to meet Major Ross at the station house of No. 7 police precinct. Since it was off the principal beats of police reporters, Morley was detained there.

Bristow went into his bedroom, where Miss Martin gave him another dose of strychnine. He asked her to await his return—not that he expected to be in need of her, he said, but just to be on the safe side. He waved aside Braceway's solicitousness about his strength.

As they stepped into the corridor, a boy handed Braceway a telegram. He read it, and, without a word, handed it to Bristow. It said:

"Two diamonds and two emeralds, unset, apparently part of Withers jewelry, pawned here about two-thirty this afternoon by medium-sized man; a little slim; black moustache; high, straight nose; bushy eyebrows; very thin lips; gray eyes; age between thirty and forty; weight 140 pounds. Two pawnshops used. No trace of him yet."

It was signed by the chief of the Baltimore plain-clothes force.

"What do you think of that?" asked Braceway, his voice hard.

"This Morley," answered Bristow, his voice equally hard, "must have lost his mind."

They went down and took a cab.

"That description," the lame man was thinking, as they rolled through the streets toward the northwest part of the city, "fits Withers perfectly, except for the moustache and the colour of the eyes. But that's absurd. I'd like to——"

He began again to wonder what, in addition to the capture of the guilty man, had brought Braceway to Washington. With his highly sensitized brain, he had received the impression that there was joined to the case some event or interest of which he had not the slightest inkling. How was Morley hooked up with the hidden phase of the affair? He intended to know all they knew about the whole business.

If Morley knew the secret—there was Maria Fulton! Incredulous for a moment, he considered an entirely new idea. His incredulity vanished—and he knew!

He lay back against the cab cushion and laughed, silently. His mirth grew. His laughter was almost beyond control. This was the thing that had bothered him, the "hidden angle" that had escaped him. He laughed until he shook. He had to put his hand to his mouth to prevent bursting into prolonged, riotous guffaws.

That was it—Withers and Fulton, and Braceway of course, were afraid of Morley, afraid of what he might say; not about events of the night of the murder, but what he might reveal concerning——

He struggled again with his consuming mirth. He saw now that he had handled everything exactly as it should have been handled.

Now, more than ever before, he was interested in what the embezzler would say under their examination and cross-questioning. It was like a game in which he, Bristow, was the assured winner before even the first move was made. He knew already the very thing they were so intent on concealing.



CHAPTER XXII

A CONFESSION

Bristow, satisfied now that he had fathomed Braceway's reluctance to accept as final the case against Perry Carpenter, had not been the only one mystified by the detective's course. Practically every other detective and police official in the country was wondering what secret motive had impelled Braceway to keep public attention focused on the tragedy after a flawless case against the real murderer had been established.

They knew that he was in the employ of the husband and father of the murdered woman, and that, therefore, his acts had the endorsement of her family. What, then, they asked, was the true situation back of the pursuit and persecution of the bank clerk, Henry Morley?

What possible interest could they have in running him down, in ruining his standing? What contingency was powerful enough to compel their approval of Braceway's forcing the conclusion upon the mind of the public that an ugly scandal had touched Mrs. Withers?

And this question, at first whispered in the gossip in Furmville, had crept into the newspaper dispatches. The result was a morbid curiosity generally, and, in the minds of many, a belief that Braceway would fasten the crime on Morley. There were, however, a few who took the position that Morley, even if he had not committed the murder, had knowledge of some fact or facts even more terrible than the crime itself.

Major Ross awaited the two men in a large, bare-walled room on the second floor of the station house. The night was oppressively warm, and the tall, narrow windows were thrown open. Like Braceway, Bristow took off his coat, the absence of it showing plainly the outline of his heavy belt and steel brace.

Morley was ushered in and given one of the plain, straight-backed chairs with which the room was furnished. The only other furniture was a deal table, behind which Braceway, Bristow, and Major Ross sat in lounging attitudes. The major, aside from his interest in the case, was there merely as a matter of courtesy, a compliment to Braceway's reputation.

The prisoner, a few feet from them across the table, was suggestive of neither resistance nor mental alertness. Above his limp collar and loosened cravat, his face looked haggard and drawn. It was without a vestige of colour save for the blue shadows under his eyes. There was a tremor on his lips almost continuously.

Once or twice throughout the whole interview, his eyes brightened momentarily with a hint of cunning or attempted cunning. Except for these few flashes, he was manifestly beaten, unnerved, suffering from a simultaneous desire and inability to weigh and ponder what he said.

Braceway began, in quick, incisive sentences:

"You're up against it, Morley. You know it as well as we do. And we don't want to trick you or bully you. We're only after the truth. If you'll tell the truth, it will help you and us. Will you give us a straight story?"

"Yes," he answered dully, his hands folded, like a woman's, against his body.

Braceway put more imperiousness into his voice.

"You know you're under arrest for embezzlement, don't you?"

"Yes."

"And you did take money from the Anderson National Bank?"

Morley squirmed and looked at each of the three in front of him before he replied to that.

"Yes," he said finally, swallowing hard, his voice high and strained.

"Good! That's the sensible way to look at it," Braceway jogged him with rapid speech. "We needn't bother any more about that tonight. How about the jewelry you pawned in Baltimore today?"

The prisoner licked his lips and fixed on Braceway a look that grew into a stare.

"You mean the rubies?"

"Well, yes."

"I didn't pawn them, and—and they were my mother's."

"How about the diamonds and emeralds?"

"I had no diamonds and emeralds."

"You didn't! Where were you all the afternoon preceding the time you showed up at Eidstein's?"

This was his first intimation that he had been watched. He hesitated.

"Do I have to tell that?"

"Certainly. Why shouldn't you?"

A film, like tears, clouded his weak eyes. His voice was disagreeably beseeching.

"It would bring my mother into this," he objected, twining his fingers about each other and shuffling his feet.

"You'll have to tell us where you were and what you did," Braceway persisted.

"Oh, very well," he said desperately; "I was in a room in the Emerson Hotel with—with my mother. And I was—I was confessing to her that I'd stolen from the bank. She knew I needed money. I had told her I'd been speculating, and needed some extra money for margins. She gave me the rubies from her earrings; and she followed me to Baltimore. If I couldn't raise the money on the rubies, she was to borrow it on our house. She owns that."

He paused, on the verge of tears.

"Buck up!" Braceway prodded him. "You confessed to her, did you?"

"Yes. At the last, somehow, I couldn't stand the idea of her giving up the last thing she had, but—but she would have done it."

"Could she have mortgaged her home in Baltimore?"

"Yes. Mr. Taliaferro, A. G. Taliaferro, the lawyer, would have fixed it for her. He's a friend of the family—used to be of father's."

"Now, about the emeralds and diamonds?" Braceway began another attack.

"I don't know what you mean."'

"They belonged to Mrs. Withers."

Morley shook his head impatiently.

"I don't know anything about them."

Bristow took a hand in the questioning, flicking him and provoking him by tone and word. But neither he nor Braceway could get an admission, or any appearance of admission, that he knew anything about the Withers jewelry.

Furthermore, he declared that his presence in the hotel, from the time Delaney had "lost" him until his second appearance at Eidstein's at four o'clock, could be established by the room clerk, two bellboys, and a maid at the Emerson, and by the lawyer, Taliaferro, with whom he had talked on the telephone while there with his mother.

According to him, he had unwittingly evaded Delaney by the simple act of stepping into the elevator and going to the room where his mother, having reached Baltimore an hour later than he, was waiting to hear how he had fared in his interview with Eidstein.

He had hoped, he said, to cover up the $700 shortage at the bank with the money obtained from the dealer in antiques, but, thinking of the risk of his mother's being impoverished, he had renounced at the last moment the plan of getting more money through the mortgage or sale of the home.

"Do you happen to know that a man, clumsily disguised and answering to your description, pawned some of the Withers jewelry in Baltimore today?" Braceway asked.

"Did he?" He looked blank.

"Yes. What do you know about it?"

"I've already told you: not a thing."

Braceway, recognizing the futility for the present of prolonging this line of inquiry, paused, looking at him thoughtfully.

"If I pawned them," Morley added, without raising his eyes, "why wasn't the money found on me?"

"Don't get too smart!" Bristow put in so roughly and suddenly that the prisoner started violently. "What we want is facts, not arguments!"

The lame man leaned forward in his chair and made his voice sharp, provocative.

"You're not as clever as you think you are. You lied when you made your statement about the night Mrs. Withers was murdered. Now, come through with that—the truth about it!"

Morley, utterly bewildered, stared and said nothing.

"What did you do that night? Where were you?"

Bristow left his chair and, going round the table, stood in front of Morley.

"I told you that once. I wasn't anywhere near Manniston Road."

"Yes, you were! We've got proof of it. You were there!"

"What proof?"

"You're curious about that, are you? I thought you would be! For one thing, the imprint of your rubber shoe on the porch floor of Number Five—"

"No! No! I wasn't on the porch. I——" He checked the words, realizing that he had betrayed himself.

"Not on the porch?" Bristow caught him up. "Where, then? Where?" He limped a step nearer to the prisoner. "Out with it now! You were there! You were there!"

He stood over Morley, conquering him by the sheer weight of his personality.

"I wasn't on the porch."

"All right—not on the porch. But where?"

Morley looked up at him and, mechanically, pushed his chair back, as if he felt the need of more space. Bristow, in his shirt-sleeves, his right arm held up, continued to crowd against him, threatening him, commanding him to speak.

Braceway was amazed by the intensity of Bristow's glance, the tautness of his body, the harsh authority in his voice. This man who had been ill a few hours before exhibited now a strength and a vitality that would have been remarkable in anybody. In him, under the circumstances, it was nothing short of marvellous.

Morley could not withstand him.

"I don't know anything—anything worth while," he said weakly, trembling from head to foot. "I would have told it at the very—at the very first; only I thought it might keep me in Furmville too long. I wanted to get back here and——"

"Never mind about what you wanted!" Bristow's hand fell and gripped his shoulder painfully, shook him, brought him back to the main issue. "What did you see? That's what we want to know, every bit of it, all of it!"

Morley flinched, trying to throw off Bristow's hand. The lame man stepped back.

"All right," he said, "I'm not going to hurt you."

Morley, having yielded, told his story hurriedly, with little pauses here and there, struggling for breath.

"I did miss my train, the midnight," he began. "I really tried to catch it. But, when I found it was gone, I couldn't sleep. I was worried and frightened. This bank business was on my mind. I wanted to think." He forced a mirthless smile at that. "I couldn't think very straight, but I tried to. I couldn't do anything but see myself in jail, in the penitentiary, because of the bank.

"I wandered around without paying any attention to where I was. I'd left my bags in the station. The first thing I knew, I was on Manniston Road, in front of Number Nine—your house. I felt tired, and I sat down on the bottom step. I had on a raincoat. It—it was pitch-dark there.

"The two electric lights, the street lights, on that block were out—had burnt out, or something. The only light I could see was down at the corner, where Manniston Road goes into Freeman Avenue—and that didn't give any light where I was."

"That's true," Bristow said sharply, "but, from where you sat, anybody going up or down the steps of Number Five would have been directly between you and the avenue light. Isn't that so?"

"Yes."

"All right—go ahead. What did you see?"

Morley hitched back his chair still further. He had begun to perspire, and he kept running his fingers round his neck between flesh and collar.

"It was raining," he went on, his voice strained and metallic, "a fine drizzle at that time, and this made a circle of light, a kind of bright screen around the avenue light. Things that happened on, or near, the steps of Number Five were silhouetted against that screen of light.

"I'd been there just a little while when I noticed some kind of movement on the steps of Number Five. It was a man coming down the steps. He was very careful about it, and very slow; looked like a man on his tiptoes."

Bristow maintained his attitude of hanging over him, urging him on, forcing him to talk. Braceway and Major Ross, their faces wearing strained expressions, bent forward in their chairs, catching every syllable that came from the prisoner.

"He went down the steps and turned down Manniston Road, toward the avenue."

"All right!" Bristow prompted. "What then?"

"That was all there was to that. I just sat there. It looked funny to me, but I didn't follow him. I wondered what he'd been doing. I never thought about murder or—or anything like that. I swear I didn't!"

He licked his lips and gulped.

"I sat there, I don't know how much longer it was—pretty long, I suppose. I didn't keep my glance always toward Number Five.

"When I did look that way again, I saw another man come down the steps quietly, very cautiously. He turned toward me, but he came only far enough up to cut in between Number Five and Number Seven. He disappeared that way, between the two houses."

"Did you see the struggle?" Braceway asked sharply.

Bristow scowled at the interruption.

"What struggle?" Morley retorted, vacant eyes turned toward Braceway.

"You know! The struggle between two men at the foot of the steps of Number Five."

"I didn't see a struggle," said Morley. "There wasn't any."

"You might as well tell it straight now as later. Give me the truth about that struggle. Were you in it?"

"No."

"Now, see here! We know such a struggle occurred. If you were there, as you say you were, you must have seen it. You couldn't have helped seeing it!"

Morley denied it again, and his denial stood against all of Braceway's skill. There had been no struggle, no encounter of any two persons. He clung to that without qualification.

Bristow knew how great Braceway's disappointment was. He was convinced that Braceway, in coming to Washington, had looked forward to securing a confirmation of Withers' story. Now, instead of corroboration, he got only a flat and unshaken contradiction.



CHAPTER XXIII

ON THE RACK

Braceway waved his hand carelessly, relinquishing the post of questioner. Bristow took command again.

"What did you do after you saw the second man?"

"At first, I sat still. After a while, not very long, it occurred to me that the two women in Number Five might be in danger. I say it occurred to me, but I didn't really think so.

"I walked down to the bungalow, but I couldn't hear any noise, couldn't see any light. Finally, I went up to the head of the steps and listened, but there wasn't a sound. Then I went back to the hotel—no; I went first to the station, got my grips, and then went to the hotel."

"Didn't murder or robbery occur to you when you saw those two men on the steps?"

"Well—no; I can't say either occurred to me."

"What did, then?"

"I knew Withers had visited his wife unexpectedly once or twice before, late at night."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I thought he was jealous, suspicious."

"And you also thought these two men you saw were Withers?"

"They might have been one man, the same man," Morley advanced the supposition wearily. The tremor of his hands had gone into his arms; they jerked every few moments. "I saw them at different times.

"I couldn't see that clearly. But—but I think the first one wore a long raincoat, or else he was heavily built. Hearing about the negro the next day, I thought the first figure I'd seen must have been the negro's. The second didn't look very different. He might have had a beard; perhaps, he was a little slenderer. Those are the only differences I remember."

"Did the second wear a raincoat?"

"I thought so."

"And the first had no beard?"

"He might have, but I don't think so."

Bristow paused long enough to let the silence become impressive. Then he broke the stillness with a voice that cracked sharp as a revolver shot.

"Well! What about the struggle at the foot of the steps?"

Morley, startled by the unexpected abruptness, answered shakily.

"I tell you I—I didn't see any struggle. That man, or those men, tried not to make any noise at all. He thought nobody saw him."

Braceway took a hand again in the examination, but their combined efforts got nothing further from the tired prisoner.

They tried to shake him with the accusation that he had entered the bungalow Monday night; they told him also they might take him back to Furmville at once, charged with the murder.

"It wouldn't make any difference to me," he said, making a weak attempt to laugh. "It wouldn't matter now. I'm not anxious to live anyhow."

Without warning, utter collapse struck him. He flung himself half-around on his chair so that his arms rested on its back, cradling his face. His body was contorted by gasping sobs, and his feet tapped the floor with the rapidity of those of a man running at top speed.

They left him with Major Ross. On the way back to the hotel, Bristow asked:

"What about Withers' story of his struggle—the 'big, strong man' who flung him down the walk?"

"There must have been another, a third man who came down the steps," Braceway answered quietly.

"An assumption," observed Bristow, "which rather strains my credulity."

Braceway said nothing.

"I believe," Bristow spoke up again, "what the fellow said tonight was true—substantially true."

"Do you?" retorted Braceway, thoroughly non-committal.

"Anyway there remains the problem of who pawned the Withers emeralds and diamonds this afternoon."

"It may not be a problem," said Braceway. "It may be that they weren't the Withers stuff at all."

"Ah! I hadn't thought of that."

They entered the hotel and sat down in the lobby, now almost deserted.

"I think," Bristow announced, careful to keep any note of triumph out of his voice, "I'll go back to Furmville in the morning." He yawned and stretched himself. "I'm about all in, weak as a kitten. What are you planning?"

Braceway's chin was thrust forward. He looked belligerent, angry.

"I'm going to Baltimore tomorrow. I intend to run down every clue I have or can find. I'm going to take up every statement he made tonight and dissect it—every point. I want all the facts—all of them."

Bristow turned so as to face him squarely.

"Why don't you go back with me? Why keep on fighting what I've proved? I think I know why you came to Washington. It wasn't your belief in Morley's guilt. It was your desire to clear Withers. But you know as well as I do that Withers isn't guilty. So, why worry?"

Braceway sprang to his feet.

"Morley isn't out of the woods yet," he said grimly. "This case isn't settled yet, by a long shot. I'm going to stick right here."

He made no reference to Withers.

Bristow went to his room, paid and dismissed Miss Martin, and began to undress. He was more than satisfied with everything that had happened. He had bested Braceway again, this time finally; his reputation as a "consulting detective" was more than safe; and, knowing now why Braceway had pursued Morley, he would return to Furmville in the morning, his mind thoroughly at ease.



CHAPTER XXIV

MISS FULTON WRITES A LETTER

As long as the public's morbid curiosity clamoured for details of the case, the newspapers provided them lavishly. This curiosity was intensified by two things: first, the search for a murderer after so much almost convincing evidence had been found against the negro, and, second, the duel between Bristow, the amateur, and Braceway, the professional, each bent on making his theory "stand up." The amateur had achieved far more celebrity than he had expected.

It would have been hard to find two men less alike than he and Braceway. Bristow was capable now and then of manifesting the strength and impressive authority he had exhibited in his questioning of Morley. Braceway, on the other hand, was always keyed up, dashing, imperious. And he had a kindness of heart, a very live tenderness, such as the lame man never displayed.

Braceway was of the tribe of dreamers.

He had learned that no man may hope to be a great detective unless he has imagination, unless he can throw into the dark places which always surround a mysterious crime the luminous and golden glow of fancy. He had found also that, if a man's vocabulary is without a "perhaps" or a "but why couldn't it be the other way?" he will never be able to judge human nature or to consider fairly every side of any question.

He discussed these views at breakfast with Bristow, who was interested only in his own decision of the night before to return at once to Furmville.

"My health demands it," he said; "and I can't convince myself that either you or I can dig up anything here to affect the final outcome of the case."

"You're right about the health part of it; I'm not sure about the other," said Braceway.

"What are you after, though?" Bristow pressed him.

"Facts. That bearded man with the gold tooth, the fellow who always started from nowhere and invariably vanished into thin air—I don't propose to assume that he had nothing to do with the murder of Enid Withers. I don't intend to be recorded as not having combed the country for him if necessary.

"That disguised man is no myth. And Morley knows all about beard 'make-up.' His note to me in Furmville proved that. The negro boy, Roddy, swears Morley and the mysterious stranger are the same.

"There isn't a crook living who can put it over on me this way with a cheap disguise. And this case isn't cleared up until, in some way, I find out who he is or get my hands on him." His voice was vibrant with the intensity of his feeling. "I'm going to find him! I intend to answer, to my own satisfaction, two questions."

"What are they?"

"The first is: was the bearded man Morley? The second: if Morley wasn't the bearded man, who was?"

"But, if you do find this hirsute individual, what then? What becomes of the unassailable evidence against the negro?"

"That will come later. Today I'm going to Baltimore. I've a report already, this morning, from Platt. He went over there last night. Morley, I find, deceived us again last night. He said nothing of leaving the hotel to call on the lawyer, Taliaferro.

"As a matter of fact, he did visit Taliaferro.

"He called the lawyer on the telephone at twenty minutes past two and said he would go at once to his office. If he had done so, he would have arrived there at twenty-four minutes past two. He reached there, in fact, at two-fifty, ten minutes of three. A half-hour of his time isn't accounted for. He left the hotel at two-twenty-one. Where did he spend that last half-hour? It's an interesting point."

"Yes," Bristow said, surprised. "Pawnshops?"

"Perhaps—two pawnshops."

"And the pawned diamonds and emeralds are certainly the Withers stuff, a part of it?"

"I'm sure of it."

"Anyway you look at it," Bristow smiled pleasantly, his manner tinged with patronizing, "you've a hard job to get away with."

"If," the other ruminated, "the jewels pawned yesterday were not Mrs. Withers', why wouldn't the man who pawned them come forward and say so? If there wasn't anything crooked about them, why should he hide himself? The papers are full of it this morning. It's public property."

Bristow, looking at his watch, saw that it was nine o'clock and time for him to go to the railroad station.

They said good-bye, each confident that the other was on the wrong trail.

"I'm leaving you," the lame man declared, "to run to your heart's content around the clever circles you've outlined, and to beat off the newspaper reporters."

"It's not for long," Braceway returned seriously. "I hope to be in Furmville next week with an armful of new facts. I'll see you then."

He went to the desk and got his mail. In addition to reports from his Atlanta office, there was one letter in a big, square envelope. He recognized the writing and opened that first.

"Dear Mr. Braceway," it said: "I hope Mr. Bristow repeated to you everything I told him. He is quite brilliant, I have no doubt, but I talked to him in the belief and hope that he would tell you everything. I know what you can do, and I trust you more than I do him. You see, you have successes behind you.

"If he did not tell you all, I shall be glad to do so at any time."

It was signed, "Sincerely yours, Maria Fulton."

He read the note twice. When he put it into his pocket, there was a new light in his eyes, and at the corners of his mouth a relaxation of the lines of sternness.

"I wonder——" he began in his thoughts, and added: "Some other time, perhaps. No; surely. I always knew her better than she knew herself."

He was frankly happy, felt himself uplifted, freshened in spirit. Standing there in the crowded lobby, with people brushing past him and jogging his elbow, he flashed back two years in memory to the evening when he had warned her not to let the sweetness of her personality be overshadowed by her sister. It was then that he had insisted on her living her own life instead of giving up to the wishes of others always.

She had misconstrued it, deciding that he was disappointed in her. She said his love for her had lessened, and therefore their engagement was a great mistake.

Then came her promise to marry Morley, a promise made in pique. Afterwards she had done everything possible to show the world she had chosen a man instead of a weakling. This, Braceway knew, was why she had advanced him money, bolstering up one mistake with another. It was why she had listened to his stories of getting great wealth, if only he had a small amount of money to start on!

What a fiasco the whole thing had been, what bitter disappointment and sorrow! And yet, she had been fortunate in discovering now what he was.

There was no doubt about it, Braceway decided; she had loved him, Braceway, all this time. In a few days he would tell her so, make her confess it. He would compel her to listen to what he had to say; he would never again jeopardize their happiness by allowing her to misunderstand him.

He crossed the lobby with long, springy strides. He felt that he could encounter no obstacle too great for him to overcome. Failure could not touch him.

He left the hotel and went to Golson's office. He had much to do in Baltimore—and elsewhere.

Hurrying to the station after a brief conference with Golson, he wondered why he had heard nothing from Withers. What was the matter with George anyhow? Why hadn't he acknowledged the telegram of yesterday? Couldn't he realize, without being told, that he might be charged with the murder at any moment?

Braceway was as well aware as Bristow of the rising flood of criticism against Withers.

"If I can't bring things to a last show-down within a day or two," he looked the situation squarely in the face, "it will be uncomfortable for him—emphatically uncomfortable."

He turned to a study of the questions he wanted to put to Eidstein, this kindly old merchant who was so considerate, so handsomely considerate, about buying back jewels he had once sold. Mr. Eidstein, he felt sure, must be an interesting character.



CHAPTER XXV

A MYSTIFYING TELEGRAM

Reaching Furmville early Sunday morning, Bristow went straight to his bungalow, where Mattie had breakfast waiting for him.

"You is sholy some big man now, Mistuh Bristow!" she informed him. "Sence you been gawn, folks done made it a habit to drive by hyuh jes' foh de chanct uv seem' you."

Before the day was over, he found that this was true. And he liked it. He spent a great deal of his time on the front porch, finding it far from unpleasant to be regarded as a second Sherlock Holmes.

Late in the afternoon his Cincinnati friend, Overton, called on him, puffing and gasping for breath as he climbed the steps. Bristow was glad to see him; it afforded him an opportunity to discuss his success. He did not try to delude himself in that regard; he was proud of what he had accomplished—rightfully proud, he told himself—and pleased with his plans for the future.

"Gee whiz!" the fat man panted. "This hill is something fierce. It's only your sudden dash into the limelight that drags me up here."

"You behold"—Bristow softened his statement with a deprecating laugh—"Mr. Lawrence Bristow, a finished, honest-to-heaven detective, a criminologist."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to make it my profession. I'm starting out as a professional detective."

Overton burst into bubbling laughter.

"That's rich!" he exclaimed. "You'd never in the world make good at it. Why, Bristow, you're lame; you've a crooked nose; that heavy, overhanging lip of yours—those things would enable any crook to spot you a mile off." He laughed again. "I'd like to see you shadowing some foxy second-story worker!"

"I said 'a consulting detective'," Bristow corrected him. "That shadowing business is for the hired man, the square-toed, bull-necked cops. I'll work only as the directing head, the brains of the investigations."

"Oh, that's different," said Overton, at once conciliatory. "That's nearer real sense. Big money in it, isn't there?"

"Yes. I'm not an eleemosynary institution yet."

Overton mopped his fat cheeks.

"Ah, me!" he sighed. "We never know what's ahead of us, do we? A year ago you were dubbing around in Cincinnati trying to sell real estate and working out crime problems on paper—and here you are now, a big man. It's hard to believe."

"It is, however, a very acceptable fact."

"No doubt, no doubt," assented the fat man.

On Overton's heels came the chief of police. After getting a minute recital of what had happened in Washington and Baltimore, he agreed that Braceway was only setting up straw men for the pleasure of knocking them down.

"Even if there is something mysterious in Morley's conduct, in what occurred in Baltimore," said the chief, "it can't do away with the open-and-shut fact that Perry did the murder."

"Of course," Bristow commented. "But what's the news with you?"

"For one thing, Perry gave us last night what he calls a confession. In it he says he did tell Lucy Thomas he knew where he could get money 'or something just as good'; he did go to Number Five in a more or less drunken condition; and he got as far as the front door.

"There, he says, he thought he heard a noise across the road from him, and he lost his nerve. He tiptoed down the steps and went away, passing in between Number Five and Number Seven. He ran all the way back to Lucy's house, threw down the key he had got from her, and then went to his own rooming-house. He says he stayed there the rest of the night."

"Is that all?"

"That's all."

"How about the lavalliere? Wasn't it found under his window? The papers said so."

"Yes; in the grass in the yard. But he denies knowing anything about it."

"Of course! And his confession is nothing but a confirmation of the case against him."

"Exactly. He seems to want to hang himself. And he'll do it. The grand jury meets next Thursday. He'll be indicted then, and tried two weeks later."

"What are the people here saying about Braceway's bitterness against Morley? Anything?"

"Yes. I'd meant to tell you about that. Some of the gossip hits Withers pretty hard. They can't understand what's behind this persecution of Morley after it's been proved that Perry did the murder. You've seen hints of it in the papers.

"And it looks queer. Some say Withers is guilty, out-and-out guilty, and afraid the case against Perry won't hold good. So, they say, he wants to get a case against Morley."

"A sort of second line of defense?"

"I reckon so. But, then, there are others saying right now that Morley was mixed up in some sort of scandal for which Withers wants revenge. That's what you said at the very start. Remember?"

Bristow laughed softly.

"Yes; I had that idea, and I've reasoned it out. On the way to Washington, and after we got there, I saw that Braceway wasn't entirely frank with me. You know how a man can feel a thing like that. He gets it by intuition.

"And it worried me. Having handled the case here, I didn't want him to spring some brand new angle which possibly, in some way, might make me look like a fool.

"I puzzled over the thing a whole lot. What was it he was after without letting me in on it? The night we talked to Morley in the station house, I got it. We were in a cab at the time, a lucky thing, because, when it burst upon me, I narrowly escaped hysterics. The thing came to me like an inspiration.

"Braceway was afraid Morley knew something detrimental to Withers and would spring it under questioning. Understand now: it wasn't directly connected with the murder, but something that would make it pretty hot for Withers. And here was the laugh: while Morley didn't know it, I did. Braceway had made the trip to gag Morley, to see that he didn't uncover something which, after all, Morley didn't know—and I did!

"It was this: about nine months ago Mrs. Withers, while in Washington, got a lawyer, the firm of Dutton & Dutton, to draw up for her the necessary papers for suing Withers for a divorce. In these documents she set forth in so many words that her husband had treated her with the utmost brutality, so much so that she lived daily in danger of death while under his roof.

"She regarded him, she swore, as capable of murdering her at any time. Now, do you see? If that had gotten into the newspapers, if Morley had known of it through Maria Fulton and had blurted it out, no power on earth could have kept down the very reasonable assumption that Withers had had a hand in his wife's death—or, at least, had regarded it with complaisance.

"No wonder I laughed, was it? But I said nothing about it to Braceway. I couldn't have explained to him how I knew it, although the tip came to me straight enough. And, as there's no earthly chance of Withers having been implicated in the crime, why worry about it?

"I merely laughed and—kept quiet."

Greenleaf had listened in great solemnity to this amusing recital.

"Maybe you're right," he said. "But Withers has done some funny things."

"What things?"

"His wife was buried in Atlanta Thursday morning. He immediately left Atlanta, and hasn't been seen or heard of since—a sharp contrast to old Fulton. He got back here early Friday morning and came up to Number Five. They're going to keep that bungalow."

"When did Withers leave Atlanta?"

"Thursday morning, right after the funeral. Another thing: he's heels over head in debt."

"Well, what about it? What are you driving at?" Bristow asked, perceptibly irritable.

"I'm not driving at anything. What's it to us anyway? It stimulates this ugly talk. That's all."

Bristow was doing some quick thinking. If Withers had left Atlanta early Thursday morning, he might have reached Washington by Friday afternoon—and gone to Baltimore! But did he? And did Braceway know of it and keep it to himself?

He recalled that Braceway, during their breakfast together in Washington, had said:

"Get one thing straight in your mind, Bristow. Any man I find mixed up in this murder I'm going to turn over to the police. If I thought George Withers had killed his wife, I'd hand him over so fast it would make your head swim. You may not believe that, but I would—in a second!"

Had that been a prophecy? Was Withers in Baltimore at two-thirty Friday afternoon? Could he have been fool enough to pawn anything? Or did he go there in the hope of incriminating Morley further? All these things were within the realm of possibility, but hardly credible. Braceway might have known of them, and he might not.

Abrahamson, he remembered, had put it into Braceway's head, against Braceway's own desire, that the man with the gold tooth and Withers resembled each other. But nobody believed that. It would be futile to consider it.

The chief, as if reading his thoughts, gave more information:

"Abrahamson, the loan-shark, came to my office yesterday; wanted to know where he could reach Braceway by wire. He evidently knew something and wouldn't tell me. Said he wired yesterday morning to Braceway in Washington, but the telegraph company reported 'no delivery'—couldn't locate him. I wonder what the Jew knows."

"It's too much for me." Bristow dismissed the question carelessly, but immediately flared up peevishly: "What's getting into these fellows? They act like fools, each of them, Morley and Withers, following Perry's lead and trying to have themselves arrested! But Braceway—if he wasn't in Washington, he must be on his way back here. We'll soon have his last say on the case."

"All the same," said Greenleaf, "if I were in that husband's place, I'd stay away from here. The talk's too bitter; worse here among the Manniston Road people than anywhere else."

"Well, what of it?"

"It wouldn't be the first instance of how easy it is for an innocent man to be—well, hurt."

"Oh, that sort of thing is out of the question, absurd."

"Never mind! I'd stay away. That's what I'd do."

It was almost dark when the chief of police took his departure. Bristow sat watching the last crimson light fade over the mountains. The dim electric, a poor excuse for a street lamp, had flashed on in front of No. 4. The shadows grew deeper and deeper; there was no breeze; the oaks along the roadside and in the backyards became still, black plumes above the bungalows.

Manniston Road was wrapped in darkness. The silence was broken, even at this early hour, only by the distant, faint screech of street-car wheels against the rails, or the far sound of an automobile horn down in the town, or the rattle of a sick man's cough on one of the sleeping porches. There was something uncanny, Bristow thought, in the velvet blackness and the heavy silence.

He got up and went into the living room, turning on the lights. The night, the stillness, had affected him. Perhaps, he thought, Withers after all would do well to give Furmville a wide berth. If disorganized rumour grew into positive accusation——

And what of himself, Bristow? He had run down the guilty man, had discovered and hooked together the facts that made retribution almost an accomplished thing. Could he have been mistaken, entirely wrong? Would public opinion turn also against him and say he had enmeshed an innocent negro instead of bringing to punishment a jealousy-maddened husband?

Was there a chance that, in condemning Withers, they would destroy his reputation for brilliant work?

Pshaw! He shrugged his shoulders. He was worse than the gossiping women, letting himself conjure up weird and incredible ideas. There was not a weak place, not an illogical point, in the case he had disclosed against Carpenter. He had won. His prestige was assured. Far from questioning his work, they ought to thank him for——

The reverie was interrupted by the telephone bell. He took down the receiver and shouted "Hello!" as if he resented the call. His irritation showed what a tremendous amount of nervous energy he had expended in the last six days.

"Western Union speaking," said a man's voice. "Telegram for Mr. Lawrence Bristow, nine Manniston Road."

"All right. This is Bristow. Read it to me."

"Message is dated today, Washington, D. C.—'Mr. Lawrence Bristow, nine Manniston Road, Furmville, N. C. See Encyclopaedia Britannica, volume one, page five hundred and six, second column, line fifteen to line seventeen, and page five hundred and seven, second column, line seventeen to line twenty-three.' Signed 'S. S. Braceway,' Do you get that?"

"No! Wait a minute," he called out sharply. "Let me get a pencil and take it down."

He did so, verifying the numbers by having the operator repeat the message a third time. When he had hung up the receiver, he sat staring at what he had written. It was like so much Greek to him.

"What's it all about?" he puzzled. "Is it one of Braceway's jokes?"

Then he remembered that Braceway was not that kind of a joker. He looked at his watch. He had no encyclopaedia, and it was now a quarter to eleven, too late to ring up anybody and ask the absurd favour of having extracts from an encyclopaedia read to him over the telephone. Besides, it might be something he would prefer to keep to himself.

He would wait until morning and go to the public library where he could look up the references with no questions asked. He was annoyed by the necessity of delay, angry with Braceway. He studied the numbers again, and allowed himself the rare luxury of an outburst of vari-coloured profanity.

The idea uppermost in his mind was that the telegram had to do with Withers—or could it be something about Morley?

In his bed on the sleeping porch, he looked out at the black plumes of the trees. The silence seemed now neither sinister nor oppressive. All that was sinister was in the past; had ended the night of the murder; and Carpenter would go to the chair for it—sure.

And yet, if he were Withers, he would not come back to Manniston Road. Nobody could foresee what Braceway might imagine and exaggerate, even if it indicted and condemned his closest friend.



CHAPTER XXVI

WANTED: VENGEANCE

But the next morning was the crowded beginning of the biggest day in Bristow's life, and the trip to the library was delayed. The hired automobile was waiting in front of No. 9 when a second telegram came, a bulky dispatch, scrawled with a pen across several pages. Dated from New Orleans, it read:

"Reward of five thousand dollars for discovery of my seven-year-old son within next six days. Kidnapped last Friday night. No clue so far. Am most anxious for your help. Will pay you two thousand dollars and expenses and in addition to that will pay you the reward money if you are successful. Will pay the two thousand whether you succeed or not. City and state authorities will give you all the help needed. Come at once if possible. Wire answer.

(Signed) "Emile Loutois."

It was characteristic of Bristow that he was not particularly surprised or elated by the request for his services. It was the kind of thing he had foreseen as a result of the advertising he had received.

He made his decision at once. For the past two days the Loutois kidnapping had commanded big space in the newspapers, and he was familiar with the story. Emile Loutois, Jr., young son of the wealthiest sugar planter in Louisiana, had been spirited away from the pavement in front of his home. It had been done at twilight with striking boldness, and no dependable trace of the kidnappers had been found.

The delivery boy was waiting on the porch. Bristow typewrote his reply on a sheet of note paper:

"Terms accepted. Starting for New Orleans at once."

On his way to the door, he stopped and reflected. He went back to the typewriter and sat down. He had not yet found out the real meaning of the Braceway message; and he did not propose to leave Furmville until he was assured that nothing could be done to blur the brightness of his work on the Withers case.

He realized, and at the same time resented, the tribute he paid Braceway through his hesitancy. The man was a clever detective and, if left to dominate Greenleaf unopposed, might easily focus attention on a new theory of the crime. Not that this could result in the acquittal of the negro; but it might deprive him, Bristow, of the credit he was now given.

Wouldn't it be well for him to stay in Furmville another twenty-four hours? There was Fulton; he wanted to learn how fully he approved of Braceway's refusal to accept the case against Perry Carpenter. Moreover, it seemed essential now that he discover the whereabouts of Withers. And twenty-four hours could hardly change anything in the kidnapping case.

He tore up what he had written, and rattled off:

"Held here twenty-four hours longer by Withers case. Start to New Orleans tomorrow morning. Terms accepted."

As he handed it to the boy, he saw Mr. Fulton coming up the steps. He greeted the old gentleman with easy, smiling cordiality and pushed forward a chair for him, giving no sign of impatience at being delayed in his trip to the library.

The simple dignity and strength of Fulton's bearing was even more impressive than it had been during their first talk. The lines were still deep in his face, but his eyes glowed splendidly, and this time, when he rested his hands on the chair-arms, they were steady.

"I've come to beg news," he announced, his apologetic smile very winning.

"Just what news?" returned Bristow. "I'll be glad to give you anything I can."

"The real results of your trip; that's what I'd like to know about. I got no letter or telegram from Sam Braceway this morning; no report at all."

Bristow told him the story in generous detail, concluding with his conviction that Morley, although a thorough scoundrel, was innocent of any hand in the murder.

"I wish I could agree with you," said the old man. "I wish we all could satisfy our minds and take the evidence against the negro as final. But we can't. At least, I can't. I can't believe anything but that the disguised man, the one with the beard, is the one we've got to find."

"You still think that man is Morley?"

"I do—which reminds me. I came up here to tell you something I got from Maria, my daughter. She told me she had talked with you quite frankly. Well, she recalls that once she and this Morley were discussing the wearing of beards and moustaches; and he made this remark: 'One thing about a beard, it's the best disguise possible.'"

"That is interesting, Mr. Fulton. Anything else?"

"Yes. He had a good deal to say to that general effect. He said even a moustache, cleverly worn, changed a man's whole expression. That struck me at once, remembering that the jewels were pawned in Baltimore by a man who wore a moustache. Then, too, Morley said something about the value of eyebrows in a disguise, substituting bushy ones for thin ones, or vice versa. He had the whole business at his tongue's end."

"He said all that, in what connection—crime?"

"She can't recall that. She merely remembers he said it. I thought you'd like to know of it."

"Of course. We can't have too many facts. By the way, sir, can you tell me where Mr. Withers is?"

"In Atlanta."

Seeing that he knew nothing of his son-in-law's disappearance, Bristow dropped the subject, and asked:

"What is Miss Fulton's belief now? She still thinks Morley is the man?"

The old man hitched his chair closer to Bristow's and lowered his voice.

"She says a curious thing, Mr. Bristow. She declares that, if Morley isn't guilty, George Withers is."

"And you?"

"Oh, the talk about George is absurd."

"But," urged Bristow, his smile persuasive, "for the sake of argument, if circumstances pointed to him as——"

"I'd spend every dollar I have, use the last atom of my strength, to send him to the chair! No suffering, no torture, would be too much for him—if that's what you mean to ask me. If I even suspected him, I'd subject him to an inquiry more relentless, more searching, more merciless than I'd use with anybody else!"

His nostrils expanded curiously. His eyes flamed.

"Mr. Bristow," he continued, menace in his low tone, "no punishment ever devised by man could be sufficient to pay for, to atone for, the horror, the enormity, of the destruction of such a woman as my daughter was. Mercy? I'd show him no mercy if he lived a thousand years!"

"I understand your feeling," Bristow said. "You're perfectly right, of course. And what I was leading up to is this: although we know that the idea of Withers' guilt is absurd, he's being made to suffer. You've seen intimations, almost direct statements, in the newspapers. People are talking disagreeably.

"They're saying that Braceway, employed by you and Withers, is persecuting this bank thief in the hope of building up the murder charge, so that, if the case against Carpenter falls down, Morley will be the logical man to be put on trial. You see?"

"No," Fulton said; "I don't. What do you mean?"

"That you, Withers, and Braceway are afraid Withers may be accused of the murder."

"Ah! They're saying that, are they? And you were going to say—what?"

"Simply this: the negro's the guilty man. The facts speak for themselves, and facts are incontrovertible. As surely as the sun shines, Carpenter killed your daughter. Why, then, continue this gossip, slander which besmirches Withers and is bound to attack your daughter's name?"

"What do you mean? Be a little more specific, please."

"I mean: what do you and Withers gain by letting Braceway keep this thing before the public?"

Fulton leaned far forward in his chair, his lower lip thrust out, his eyes blazing.

"No, sir!" he exploded. "I'll never call Braceway off! They're gossiping, are they? They can gossip until they're blue in the face. What do I care for public opinion, for gossip, for their leers and whispers? Nothing—not a snap of the finger! To hell with what they say! What I want is vengeance. I'll have it! Call Braceway off? Not while there's breath in me!"

He paused and bit on his lip.

"Understand me, Mr. Bristow," he continued, his tone more moderate. "I meant no criticism of you; I know how faithfully you've worked. I realize even that you have proved your case. But I can't accept it, that's all. You'll forgive an old man's temper."

Bristow carried the argument no further. He saw that Fulton, and Withers too, would follow Braceway's lead. Consequently, he was confronted with the necessity of keeping up the idiotic duel with the Atlanta detective.

Moreover, he sensed the viewpoint of the dead woman's family. They were averse to believing she had been the victim of an ordinary negro burglar. Remembering her beauty and charm, her cleverness and lovable qualities, they preferred to think that some one under great emotion, or with a terrific gift for crime, had cut short her brilliant existence.

People, he meditated, find foolish and bizarre means of comforting themselves when overwhelmed by great tragedy. Very well, then; let it go at that. After all, it was not his funeral.

Accompanying Fulton to the sidewalk, he climbed into the automobile and, in a few minutes, was in the library asking for the first volume of the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His limp proclaimed his identity, and the young woman at the desk, recognizing him, got the book for him with surprising promptness.

His habits of thought were such that he had not wasted energy during the morning in idle speculation as to what he would find. In fact, he attached but little importance to Braceway's message. He had dismissed it the night before as a queer dodge on the other's part to bolster up his view of the case.

He went to a desk in a remote part of the reading room. Under any circumstances, he would not have cared for the intense and interested scrutiny with which the girl at the desk favoured him. The attitude he took gave her ample opportunity for a study of the back of his head.

Opening the volume, he turned to the first reference, page 506, column 2, line 15 to line 17. At the first word he drew a quick breath; it was sharp enough to sound like a low whistle. He read:

"ALBINO, a biological term (Lat. albus, white), in the usual acceptation, for a pigmentless individual of a normally pigmented race."

Putting his finger on the top of the second column, page 507, he counted down to line 17, and read:

"Albinism occurs in all races of mankind, among mountainous as well as lowland dwellers. And, with man, as with other animals, it may be complete or partial. Instances of the latter condition are very common among the negroes of the United States and of South America, and in them assumes a piebald character, irregular white patches being scattered over the general black surface of the body."

Before he began to think, he read the passages carefully a second time. Then he continued to hold the book open, staring at it as if he still read.

The importance of the words struck him immediately. He grasped their meaning as quickly and as fully as he would have done if Braceway had stood beside him and explained. The skin of a white person and that of an albino show up the same under a microscope: white. If a man had under his finger nails particles of white skin, he could have collected them there by scratching an albino as well as by scratching a Caucasian, a white woman.

And Lucy Thomas was an albino. He was certain of that; did not question it for a moment. Braceway had assured himself of that before sending the telegram.

Perry Carpenter had had a fight or a tussle with her in securing the key to No. 5 the night of the murder, and in the scoffling he had scratched her. That, at least, would be Perry's story and Lucy's. Braceway had been certain of that also before wiring to him.

As a matter of fact, Braceway had known all this before they had started for Washington and had kept it back, playing with him, laughing up his sleeve. The thought nettled him, finally made him thoroughly angry. He compelled himself to weigh the new situation carefully.

Well, what of it, even if Lucy were an albino and Perry had scratched her? Did that affect materially the case against Perry? There was still evidence to prove that he had been to the Withers' bungalow. He had confessed it himself. And the lavalliere incidents and the blouse buttons substantiated it still further.

The albino argument was by no means final, could not be made definite. The fact remained that there had been scratches on the murdered woman's hand and that particles of a white person's skin had been found under Perry's finger nails. That was not to be denied. Of course, the negro's attorney could argue that these particles had come from Lucy Thomas, not from Mrs. Withers.

But it would be only an argument. The jury would pass judgment on it—and he was willing to leave it to the jury.

He closed the book, took it back to the desk and thanked the young woman. There was nothing in his appearance to indicate disappointment. In fact, he felt none. By the time he reached home he had gone over the whole thing once more and dismissed it as of no real consequence. Braceway's discovery, or his making the discovery known, had come too late.

If it had been brought out ahead of Perry's confession—yes; it would have made quite a difference then.

"Let the heathen rage!" he thought, remembering the bitter stubbornness with which Braceway and Fulton denied the negro's guilt.

Braceway's withholding the albino information, playing him for a fool, recurred to him, and the accustomed flush on his cheeks grew deeper. He would not forget that; he would pay it back—with interest.

He turned to the Loutois case. Going to his typewriter, he made a list of New Orleans, Atlanta, and New York newspapers.

"Mattie," he called, "I want you to go down to a news-stand, the big one; I think it's at the corner of Haywood and Patton."

He handed her money.

"And here's a list of the papers you're to get. Ask for all of them published since last Friday. Be as quick as you can. I'm in a hurry."

When she came back, she brought also the early edition of the Furmville afternoon paper. He glanced at it, looking for Washington or Baltimore news of Braceway's activities. He found it on the front page. The headlines read:

FINDS NEW EVIDENCE ON WITHERS MURDER

MORLEY GUILTY, OR—WHO?

Whereabouts of Murdered Woman's Husband Not Known—Braceway Predicts New and Amazing Disclosure.

The dispatch itself was:

"Washington, D. C., May 14.—That an entirely new light will soon be thrown on the brutal murder of Mrs. Enid Fulton Withers, beauty and society favourite of Atlanta and Washington, became known here today.

"Samuel S. Braceway, probably the ablest private detective in this country, left this city yesterday afternoon for Furmville, N. C., the scene of the crime, after he had completed an exhaustive investigation here and in Baltimore of more or less obscure matters related to the murder. Police officials here state that the negro, Perry Carpenter, now held in the Furmville jail for the crime, will never go to trial.

"This, they claim, will be but one result of the work Braceway did here and in Baltimore. The detective himself was reticent when interviewed just before he caught his train, but, as he stood on the platform, nobbily dressed and twirling his walking stick, he was the picture of confidence.

"'I think you're safe in saying,' he admitted 'that the Withers case hasn't yet been settled. We're due for some surprising disclosures unless I miss my guess.'

"'Can you tell us anything about the suspicions directed against Henry Morley?' he was asked.

"'It's Morley or—somebody else,' Braceway said smilingly. 'Anybody can study the facts and satisfy himself on that point.'

"'Who's the somebody else?'

"'We'll know pretty soon. In fact, things should develop in less than a week, considerably less than a week.'

"One of the interesting sidelights on this mysterious murder case, it was learned this morning, is that the whereabouts of the murdered woman's husband, George S. Withers of Atlanta, is at present unknown. Dispatches from Atlanta say he disappeared from there the morning his wife's funeral took place. Advices from Furmville are that he is not there with his father-in-law and sister-in-law. Braceway said yesterday he knew nothing of Withers' whereabouts."

Beneath the Washington dispatch was one from Atlanta:

"Inquiry made here today failed to disclose where George S. Withers, husband of the victim of the brutal crime at Furmville, N. C., is now. He left this city the morning Mrs. Withers was buried, according to his friends, but said nothing as to his destination or the probable length of time he would be away.

"The Atlanta authorities were asked by the Washington police to locate him if possible. No reason for the request was given."

There was a smile on Bristow's lips when he tossed the paper to one side. Braceway, he deduced from the article, was having his troubles making the Morley theory hang together. And why should he hurry back to Furmville? There was nothing new here.

He shrugged his shoulders and unwrapped the bundle of out-of-town papers.

Recalling how late he had received the albino message the night before, he concluded that Braceway had filed it in Washington during the afternoon, with instructions that it be sent as a night message. His resentment for Braceway flared up again.

"'Amazing disclosure,'" he mentally quoted the headlines. "Well, we shall see what we shall see. Perhaps, it will come as an amazing disclosure to him that I've been on the sound side of this question all along."

He began the work of cutting from the papers the accounts of the Loutois kidnapping. As he read them, he built up a tentative outline showing who the kidnappers were and where they probably had secreted the boy. He grew absorbed, whistling in a low key.

So far as he was concerned, the Withers case was a closed incident.

Early in the afternoon he called Greenleaf on the telephone, and announced:

"I'm leaving town for a few days tomorrow morning."

"Again! What for?" the chief asked.

"They've asked me to work out that kidnapping case in New Orleans—the Loutois child."

"Good! I'm glad to hear it; I congratulate you."

Greenleaf was sincerely pleased. He felt that he had sponsored and developed the lame man as a detective.

"Thanks. Before I go, I want to have a talk with you. We might as well go over everything once more and——"

"That reminds me. I was just about to call you up, but your news made me forget. I've a wire from Braceway, just got it. He filed it at Salisbury, on his way here. Let me read it to you:

"'Have all the stuff I can get on Withers case. Can not go further before conferring with you, Bristow, Fulton, and Abrahamson. Please arrange meeting of all these Bristow's bungalow eight tonight. Withers not with me.'"

"That fits in," Bristow commented; "lets me start for New Orleans on the late night train."

"Wonder what he's got," the chief questioned. "Do you know?"

"No. And I don't believe it amounts to anything. Still, if he wants to talk, we might as well hear it."

"Sure! You can count on me. I'll be there."

"All right," said Bristow. "I'll see you at eight, then."

He went to the sleeping porch and lay down.

"'Withers not with me,'" the last words of the telegram lingered in his mind. "Why did he add that? What's that to do with a conference here tonight?"

Suddenly the answer occurred to him.

"It's Withers!" he thought, at first only half-credulous. "He's going to put it on Withers; he's going to try to put it on Withers."

He paused, thinking "wild" for a moment, so great was his surprise.

"It was Withers he was after from the start,—was it?"



CHAPTER XXVII

THE REVELATION

Braceway and Maria Fulton had upon their faces that expression which announces a happy understanding between lovers. The light of surrender was in her eyes, contented surrender to the man who, because of his love, had asserted his mastery of her. And his voice, as he spoke to her, was all a vibrant tenderness. He realized that he had found and finally made certain his happiness, had done so at the very moment of making public his greatest professional triumph.

For his visit to her he had stolen a half-hour from the rush of work that had devolved upon him since reaching Furmville a few hours ago. He found her as he had expected; she fulfilled his prophecy that, in following her own ideals, she would take her place in the world as a fascinating personality, a lovable woman.

But, while he studied and praised her new charm, he was conscious, more keenly so than ever before, that his success would affect her greatly, would challenge all her strength and courage. And yet, even if it hurt her, it had to be done. It was his duty, and the consequences would have to take care of themselves.

Although, in her turn, she regarded him with the fine intuition of the woman who loves, she got no intimation of his worry. He had determined not to burden her with the details in advance. If what he was about to do should link her dead sister with a pitiless scandal, she would meet it bravely.

Unless he had been confident of that, he could not have loved her. His task was to hand over to justice the guilty man, and not even his concern for the woman he would marry could interfere with his seeing the thing through.

After it was all over, he would come back to comfort her. Their new happiness would counter-balance all. So he thought, with confidence.

A glance through the window showed him Greenleaf and Abrahamson coming slowly up Manniston Road. It was eight o'clock. A few moments later he and Mr. Fulton joined them on the sidewalk. They went at once to No. 9.

Bristow received them in his living room, the table still littered with newspaper clippings on the Loutois kidnapping.

"If the rest of you don't mind," Braceway suggested, "we'd better close the windows. We've a lot of talking to do, and we might as well keep things to ourselves."

The effect of alertness which he always produced was more evident now than ever. He kept his cane and himself in continual motion. While the four other men seated themselves, he remained standing, facing them, his back to the empty fire-place.

"Each of you," he said, "is vitally interested in what I've come here to say. I asked you to have this conference because it affects each of us directly."

His eyes shone, his chin was thrust forward, every ligament in his body was strung taut. And yet, there was nothing of the theatric about him. If he felt excitement, it was suppressed. Determination was the only emotion of which he gave any sign.

"First, however," he supplemented in his light, conversational tone, "how about you?" He indicated with a look Greenleaf and Bristow. "Have you anything new, anything additional?"

With the windows shut, it was noticeably warm and close in the room. Taking off his coat, he tossed it to the chair which had been placed for him. In his white shirt, with dark trousers belted tightly over slender hips, he looked almost boyish.

"No," Bristow answered. "The chief and I went over everything yesterday. We couldn't find a single reason for changing our minds."

"About Carpenter?"

"Yes."

"You mean that's your position, yours and the chiefs," Braceway said seriously. "As a matter of fact, the negro's not guilty."