"See if I can raise anybody," said Worth as he jumped to the ground. "Let you in, and then I'll run the roadster around to the garage."

But the house was so tightly locked up that he had finally to break in through a pantry window. I was out in front when he made it, and saw the lights begin to flash up, the porch lamp flooding me with a sudden glare before he threw the door open.

"Cold as a vault in here."

He twisted his broad shoulders in a shudder, and I looked about me. It was a big entrance hall, with a wide stairway. There on the hat tree hung a man's light overcoat, a gray fedora hat; a stick leaned below. When the master of the house went out of it this time, he hadn't needed these. Abruptly Worth turned and led the way into what I knew was the living room, with a big open fireplace in it.

"Make yourself as comfortable as you can, Jerry. I'll get a blaze here in two shakes. I suppose you're hungry as a wolf—I am. This is a hell of a place I've brought you into."

"Forget it," I returned. "I can look after myself. I'm used to rustling. Let me make that fire."

"All right." He gave up his place on the hearth to me, straightened himself and stood a minute, saying, "I'll raid the kitchen. Chung's sure to have plenty of food cooked. He may not be back here before midnight."

"Midnight?" I echoed. "Is that usual?"

"Used to be. Chung's been with father a long time. Good chink. Always given his whole Sunday, and if he was on hand to get Monday's breakfast—no questions."

"Left last night, you think?"

Worth shot me a glance of understanding.

"Sometimes he would—after cleaning up from dinner. But he wouldn't have heard the shot, if that's what you're driving at."

He left me, going out through the hall. My fire burned. I thawed out the kinks the long, chill ride had put in me. Then Worth hailed; I went out and found him with a coffee-pot boiling on the gas range, a loaf and a cold roast set out. He had sand, that boy; in this wretched home-coming, his manner was neither stricken nor defiant. He seemed only a little graver than usual as he waited on me, hunting up stuff in places he knew of to put some variety into our supper.

Where I sat I faced a back window, and my eye was caught by the appearance of a strange light, quite a little distance from the house, apparently in another building, but showing as a vague glow on the fog.

"What's down there?" I asked. Worth answered without taking the trouble to lean forward and look,

"The garage—and the study."

"Huh? The study's separate from the house?" I had been thinking of the suicide as a thing of this dwelling, an affair in some room within its walls. Of course Chung would not hear the shot. "Who's down there?"

"Eddie Hughes has a room off the garage."

"He's in it now."

"How do you know?" he asked quickly.

"There's a light—or there was. It's gone now."

"That wouldn't have been Eddie," Worth said. "His room's on the other side, toward the back street. What you saw was the light from these windows shining on the fog. Makes queer effects sometimes."

I knew that wasn't it, but I didn't argue with him, only remarked,

"I'd like to have a look at that place, Worth, if you don't mind."

CHAPTER X

He left me. I heard him at the instrument in the hall get his number, talk to some one in a low voice, and then go out the front door; next thing was the sound of the motor, the glare of its lamps as it rounded into the driveway and started down back, illuminating everything. In the general glare thrown on the fog, the fainter light was invisible, but across a plot of kitchen garden I saw where it had been; a square, squat building of concrete, flat roofed, vining plants in boxes drooping over its cornice; the typical garage of such an establishment, but nearly double the usual size. The light had come from there, but how? In the short time that the lamps of the machine were showing it up to me, there seemed no windows on this side; only the double doors for the car's entrance—closed now—and a single door which was crossed by two heavy, barricading planks nailed in the form of a great X.

Worth ran the machine close up against the doors, jumped down, and I could see his tall form, blurred by the mist, moving about to slide them open. The lamps of the roadster made little showing now as he rolled it in. Then these were switched off and everything down there was dark as a pocket. For a time I sat and waited for him to light up and call me, then started down. The fog was making the kind of dimness that has a curious, illusory character. I suppose I had gone half the distance of the garden walk, when, thrown up startlingly on the obscurity, I saw a square of white, and across that shining screen, moved the silhouette of a human head. The whole thing danced before my eyes for a bare second, then blackness.

With Cummings' queer hints in my mind, I started running across the garden toward it. About the first thing I did was step into a cold frame, plunging my foot through the glass, all but going to my knees in it; and when I got up, swearing, I was turned around, ran into bushes, tripped over obstructions, and traveled, I think, in a circle.

Then I began to go more cautiously. No use getting excited. That was only Worth I had seen. And still I was unwilling to call, ask him to show a light. I groped along until my outstretched fingers came across the corner of a building, rough, stonelike—the concrete garage and study. I felt along, seeing a bit now, and was soon passing my hands over the barricading planks of that door.

I might have lit a match, but I preferred to find out what I could by feeling around, and that cautiously. I discovered that the door had been broken in, the top panels shattered to kindling wood, the force of the assault having burst a hinge, so that the whole thing sagged drunkenly behind the heavy planks that propped it, while a strong bolt, quite useless, was still clamped into a socket which had been torn, screws and all, from the inside casing.

Sliding my hands over the broken top panel I found that it had been covered on its inner side by a piece of canvas; the screen on which that shadow had been thrown—from within the room. There was no light there now; there was no sound of motion within. The drip of the fog from the eaves was the only break in the stillness.

"Worth?" I shouted, at last, and he answered me instantly, hallooing from behind me, and to one side of the house. I could hear him running and when he spoke it was close to my shoulder.

"Where are you, Jerry?"

"Where are you," I countered. "Or rather, where have you been?"

"Getting a bar to pry off these boards."

"A bar?" I echoed stupidly.

"A crowbar from the shed. These planks will have to come off to let us in."

"The devil you say!" I was exasperated. "There's some one in here now—or was a minute back. Show me the other way in."

I heard the ring of the steel bar as its end hit the hard graveled path.

"Some one in there? Jerry, you're seeing things."

"Sure I am," I agreed drily. "But you get me to that other door quick!"

"The only other door is locked. I tried it from the garage. You're dreaming."

For reply, I ran up to the door and thrust my fist through the canvas, ripping it away from its clumsy tacking.

"Who's in there?" I cried. "Answer me!"

Dead silence; then a click as Worth snapped on a flood of light from his pocket torch, saying tolerantly, tiredly,

"I told you there was no one. There couldn't be."

"I tell you, Worth, there was. I saw the shadow on the square of that canvas. Give me the torch."

I pushed the flashlight through the opening and played the light cone about the room in a quick survey; then brought the circle of white glow to rest upon one of the side walls; and my hand went down and back to grip fingers about the butt of my revolver. There was, as Worth had said, but one other door to this room; but more, there was apparently no other exit; no windows, no breaks in the walls. My circle of light was on this second door; and the very heart of that circle was a heavy steel bolt on the door, the bar of which was firmly shot into the socket on the frame. The only exit from that room, other than the door through which I now leaned with pistol raised, was locked—bolted from the inside!

Worth was crowding his big frame into the opening beside me.

"Keep back," I growled. "Some one's inside," and I sent the light shaft into corners to drive out the shadows, to cut in under the desk and chairs. Worth's reply was a laugh, and his arm went by me to reach inside the door. Then, as his fingers found the button, a light sprang out from a lamp upon the center desk.

"You're letting your nerves play the deuce with you, Jerry," he said lightly. "Make way for my crowbar and we'll get in out of the wet."

I made no answer, but for a long moment more I searched that room with my eyes; but it was the kind you see all over at a glance. Big, square, plain, it hadn't a window in it; the walls, lined with book shelves, floor to ceiling; a fireplace; a library table with drawers; a few chairs. No chance for a hideout. I glanced at the ceiling and confirmed the evidence of my eyes. There was a skylight, and through it had come that curious glow that first attracted my attention to the place.

Then I gave Worth room to wield his tools on the barred door, while I ran quickly back to the house, into the kitchen, and plumped down in the chair where I had sat before. The light showed on the fog, brightened and dimmed as the mist drifted past. There was no possibility of a mistake: some one had been in the study, had turned on the table lamp, had projected his shadow against the patched panel of the door, and had somehow left the room, one door bolted, the only other exit barred and nailed.

I went back and rejoined Worth who was standing where a brownish stain on the rug marked a spot a little nearer the corner of the table than it was to the outer door. A curious place for a suicide to fall. Behind the table was the library chair in which Thomas Gilbert worked when at his desk; beside it a small cabinet with a humidor on its top and the open door below revealing several decanters and bottles, whisky and wine glasses, a tray; between the desk and the fireplace were two other chairs, large and comfortable; but in front of the table—between it and the door—was barren floor.

It is a fact that most men who shoot themselves do so while sitting; some lying in a bed; few standing. The psychology of this I must leave to others, but experience has taught me to question the suicide of one who has seemingly placed the muzzle of a revolver against him while on his feet. Thomas Gilbert had stood; had chosen to take his life as he was walking from door to desk, or from desk to door.

"Worth," I said. "There was somebody in here just now."

"Couldn't have been, Jerry," he answered absently; then added, his eyes on that stain, "I never could calculate what my father would do. But when I talked to him last night, right here in this room, he didn't seem to me a man ready to take his own life."

"You quarreled?"

"We always quarreled, whenever we met."

"But this quarrel was more bitter than usual?"

"The last quarrel would seem the bitterest, wouldn't it, Jerry?" he asked. Then, after a moment, "Poor Jim Edwards!"

I caught my tongue to hold back the question. Worth went on,

"When I phoned him just now, he hadn't heard a word about it. Seemed terribly upset."

"Hadn't heard?" I echoed. "How was that?"

"You know we saw him at Tait's last night. He took the Pacheco Pass road from San Francisco; drove straight to his ranch without hitting Santa Ysobel."

I wanted another look at that man Edwards. I was to have it. Worth went on absently,

"He'll be along presently to stay here while I'm away Monday. Told me it would be the first time he'd put foot in the house for four years. As boys up in Sonoma county, he and father always disagreed, but sometime these last years there was a big split over something. They were barely on speaking terms—and good old Jim took my news harder than as though I'd been telling him the death of a near friend."

"Works like that with us humans," I nodded. "Let some one die that you've disagreed with, and you remember every row you ever had with them; remember it and regret it—which is foolish."

"Which is foolish," Worth repeated, and seemed for the first time able to get away from the spot at which he had stopped.

He went over to the empty, fireless hearth and stood there, his back to the room, elbows on the mantel propping his head, face bent, oblivious to anything that I might do. It oughtn't to be hard to find the way this place could be entered and left by a man solid enough to cast a shadow, with quick fingers to snap the light on and off. But when I made a painstaking examination of a corner grate with a flue too small for anything but a chimney swallow to go up and down, a ceiling solidly beamed and paneled, the glass that formed the skylight set in firmly as part of the roof, when I'd turned up rugs and inspected an unbroken floor, even tried the corners of book cases to see if they masked a false entrance, I owned myself, for the moment, beaten there.

"Give me your torch—or go with me, Worth," I said. "I'd like to take a scoot around outside."

He didn't speak, only indicated the flashlight by a motion, where it lay on the shelf beside his hand. I took it, unbolted the door, and stepped into the garage.

Everything all right here. My roadster; a much handsomer small machine beyond it; a bench, portable forge and drill made a repair shop of one corner, and as my light flashed over these, I checked and stared. Why had Worth gone to the shed hunting a crowbar to open the door? Here were tools that would have served as well. I put from me the hateful thought, and damned Cummings and his suspicions. The shadow didn't have to be Worth. Certainly he had not first lit that lamp, for I had seen it from the kitchen with him beside me. Some one other than Worth had been in there when Worth put up the roadster. I'd find the man it really was. But even as I crossed to Eddie Hughes's door, something at the back of my head was saying to me that Worth could have been in that room—that there was time for it to be, if he had taken the crowbar from the garage and not from the shed as he said he did.

At this I took myself in hand. The lie would have been so clumsy a one that there was no way but to accept this statement for the truth; and some one else had made that shadow on the canvas.

I tried the chauffeur's door and found it locked; called, shook it, and had set my shoulder against it to burst it in, when the rolling door on the street side moved a little, and a voice said,

"H-y-ah! What you doin' there?"

I turned and flashed my light on the six-inch crack of the sliding door. It gave me a strip of man, a long drab face at top, solid, meaty looking, yet somehow slightly cadaverous, a half shut eye, a crooked mouth—if I'd met that mug in San Francisco, I'd have labeled it "tough," and located it South of Market Street.

Slowly, it seemed rather reluctantly, Eddie Hughes worked the six-inch crack wider by working himself through it.

"What the hell do you want in my room for?" he demanded. The form of the words was truculent, but the words themselves slid in a sort of spiritless fashion from the corner of that crooked mouth of his, and he added in the next breath, "I'll open up for you, when I've lit the blinks."

There was a central lamp that made the whole place as bright as day. Eddie fumbled a key out of his pocket, threw the door of his room open, and stepped back to let me pass him.

"Capehart tells me Worth's here," he said as we went in.

"When?" I gave him a sharp look. He seemed not to notice it.

"Just now. I came straight from there."

He came straight from there? Did he supply an alibi so neatly because of that shadowy head on the door panel? For a long minute we each took measure of the other, but Eddie's nerves were less reliable than mine; he spoke first.

"Well?" he grunted, scarcely above his breath. And when I continued to stare silently at him, he writhed a shoulder with, "What's doing? What d'yuh want of me?"

Still silently, I pulled out with my thumb through the armhole of my vest the police badge pinned to the suspender. His ill-colored face went a shade nearer the yellow white of tallow.

"What for?" he asked huskily. "You haven't got nothin' on me. It was suicide—cor'ner's jury says so. Lord! It has to be, him layin' there, all hunched up on the floor, his gun so tight in his mitt that they had to pry the fingers off it!"

"So you found the body?"

He nodded and gulped.

"I told all I knowed at the inquest," he said doggedly.

"Tell it again," I commanded.

Standing there, working his hands together as though he held some small, accustomed tool that he was turning, shifting from foot to foot, with long breaks in his speech, the chauffeur finally put me into possession of what he knew—or what he wished me to know. He had been out all night. That was usual with him Saturdays. Where? Over around the canneries. Had friends that lived there. He got into this place about dawn, and went straight to bed.

"Hold on, Hughes," I stopped him there. "You never went to bed—that night, or any other night—until you'd had a jolt from the bottle inside."

He gave me a surly, half frightened glance, then said quickly,

"Not a chance. Bolts on the doors, locks everywhere; all tight as a jail. Take it from me, he wasn't the kind you want to have a run-in with—any time. Always just as cool as ice himself; try to make you believe he could tell what you were up to, clear across town. Hold it over you as if he was God almighty that stuck folks together and set 'em walkin' around and thinkin' things."

He broke off and looked over his shoulder in the direction of the study. The walls were thick—concrete; the door heavy. No sound of Worth's moving in there could be heard in this room. Apparently it was the old terror of his employer, or the new terror of the employer's death, that spoke when he said,

"I got up this morning late with a throat like the back of a chimney. Lord! I never wanted a drink so bad in my life—had to have one. The chink leaves my breakfast for me Sundays; but I knew I couldn't eat till I'd had one. So I—so I—"

It was as though some recollection fairly choked off his voice. I finished for him.

"So you went in there—" I pointed at the study door, "and found the body."

"Naw! How the hell could I? I told you—locked. I crawled up on the roof, though; huntin' a way in, and I looked through the skylight. There he was. On the floor. His eyes weren't open much, but they was watchin' me—sort of sneerin'. I come down off that roof like a bat outa hell, and scuttled over to Vandeman's where his chink was on the porch, I bellerin' at him. I telephoned from there. For the bulls; and the cor'ner; and everybody. Gawd! I was all in."

I caught one point in the tale.

"So the way into the study is through the skylight, Hughes?" and he shook his head vaguely, fumbling his lips with a trembling hand as he replied,

"Honest to God, Cap'n, I don't know. I never tried. I gave just one look through it, and—" He broke off with a shudder.

"Get a ladder," I commanded. "I want to see that skylight."

While he was gone on his errand to the shed, I investigated the outer walls of the study with the torch, hunting some break in their solidity. They were concrete; a hair-crack would have been visible in the electric glow; there was no break. Then, as he placed the ladder against the coping, I climbed to the roof and stepped across its firmness to the skylight. I looked down.

Worth, kneeling on the hearth, was laying a fire in the corner grate. As he did not glance up, I knew he had not heard me. Evidently the study had been built to resist the disturbance of sound from without. That meant that the report of the revolver inside had not been heard by any one outside the walls.

Directly below me was the library table and upon its top a blue desk blotter; a silver filagreed inkstand stood open; penholders, pencils, paper knife were on a tray beside it, one pen lying separate from the others with a ruler, upon the blotting pad; books and a magazine neatly in a pile. The walls, as I circled them with my eyes, were book-lined everywhere except for the grate and the two doors.

Then I inspected the skylight, frame and glass, feeling it over with my hands. There was no entrance here. Even should a pane of glass be removable—all seemingly solid and tight—the frame between and the sash were of steel, and the panes were too small for the passage of a man. I crept back to the ladder as Worth was striking a match to light the pitch-pine kindling.

"What about this Vandeman chink?" I asked of Hughes as I rejoined him at the foot of the ladder. "Does he hang around here much?"

"Him and Chung visit back and forth a bit. I hear 'em talkin' hy-lee hy-lo sometimes when I go by the kitchen."

"Take me over there," I said.

The fog was beginning to blow away in threads; moonlight somewhere back of it made a queer, gray, glimmering world around us. We circled the garden by the path, passing a sort of gardener's tool shed where Hughes left the ladder, and from which I judged Worth had brought the bar he pried the door planks off with, to find a gap in a hedge between this place and the next.

There was a light in the rear of the house over there, and a well-trodden path leading from the hedge gap made what I took to be a servants' highway.

Vandeman's house proved to be, as nearly as one could see it in the darkness, a sprawling bungalow, with courts, pergolas and terraces bursting out on all sides of it. I could fairly see it of a fine afternoon, with its showy master sitting on one of the showy porches, serving afternoon tea in his best manner to the best people of Santa Ysobel. Just the husband for that doll-faced girl, if she only thought so. What could she have done with a young outlaw like Worth?

When I looked at the Chinaman in charge there, I gave up my idea of questioning him. Civilly enough, with a precise and educated usage of the English language, he confirmed what Eddie Hughes had already told me about the telephoning from that place this morning; and I went no further. I know the Chinese—if anybody not Mongolian can say they know the race—and I have also a suitable respect for the value of time. A week of steady questioning of Vandeman's yellow man would have brought me nowhere. He was that kind of a chink; grave, respectful, placid and impervious.

On the way back I asked Eddie about the Thornhill servants at the house on the other side of Gilbert's, and found they kept but one, "a sort of old lady," Eddie called her, and I guessed easily at the decayed gentlewoman kind of person. It seemed that Mrs. Thornhill was a widow, and there wasn't much money now to keep up the handsome place.

I left Eddie slipping eel-like through the big doors, and went into the study to find Worth sitting before the blazing hearth. He looked up as I entered to remark quietly,

"Bobs said she'd be over later, and I told her to come on down here."

CHAPTER XI

I began taking down books from the shelves at regular intervals, sounding the thick dead-wall, in search of a secreted entrance. I came on a row of volumes whose red morocco backs carried nothing but dates.

"Account books?" I asked.

Worth turned his head to look, and the bleakest thing that could be called a smile twisted his lips a little, as he said,

"My father's diaries."

"Quite a lot of them."

"Yes. He'd kept diaries for thirty years."

"But he seems to have dropped the habit. There is no 1920 book."

"Oh, yes there is," very definitely. "He never gave up setting down the sins of his family and neighbors while his eyes had sight to see them, and his hand the cunning to write." He spoke with extraordinary bitterness, finishing, "He would have had it on the desk there. The current book was always kept convenient to his hand."

An idea occurred to me.

"Worth," I asked, "did you see that 1920 volume when you were here last night?"

He looked a little startled, and I prompted,

"Were you too excited to have noticed a detail like that?"

"I wasn't excited; not in the sense of being confused," he spoke slowly. "The book was there; he'd been writing in it. I remember looking at it and thinking that as soon as I was gone, he'd sit down in his chair and put every damn' word of our row into it. That was his way. The seamy side of Santa Ysobel life's recorded in those books. I always understood they amounted to a pack of neighborhood dynamite."

"Got to find that last book," I said.

He nodded listlessly. I went to it, giving that room such a searching as would have turned out a bent pin, had one been mislaid in it. I even took down from the shelves books of similar size to see if the lost volume had been slipped into a camouflaging cover—all to no good. It wasn't there. And when I had finished I was positive of two things; the study had no other entrance than the apparent ones, and the diary of 1920 had been removed from the room since Worth saw it there the night before. I reached for one of the other volumes. Worth spoke again in a sort of dragging voice,

"What do you want to look at them for, Jerry?"

"It's not idle curiosity," I told him, a bit pricked.

"I know it's not that." The old, affectionate tone went right to my heart. "But if you're thinking you'll find in them any explanation of my father's taking his own life, I'm here to tell you you're mistaken. Plenty there, no doubt, to have driven a tender hearted man off the earth.... He was different." Eyeing the book in my hand, the boy blurted with sudden heat, "Those damn' diaries have been wife and child and meat and drink to him. They were his reason for living—not dying!"

"Start me right in regard to your father, Worth," I urged anxiously. "It's important."

The boy gave me his shoulder and continued to stare down into the fire, as he said at last, slowly,

"I would rather leave him alone, Jerry."

I knew it would be useless to insist. Never then or thereafter did I hear him say more of his father's character. At that, he could hardly have told more in an hour's talk.

At random, I took the volume that covered the year in which, as I remembered, Thomas Gilbert's wife had secured her divorce from him. Neatly and carefully written in a script as readable as type, the books, if I am a judge, had literary style. They were much more than mere diaries. True, each entry began with a note of the day's weather, and certain small records of the writer's personal affairs; but these went oddly enough with what followed; a biting analysis of the inner life, the estimated intentions and emotions, of the beings nearest to him. It was inhuman stuff. But Worth was right; there was no soil for suicide in this matter written by a hand guided by a harsh, censorious mind; too much egotism here to willingly give over the rôle of conscience for his friends. Friends?—could a man have friends who regarded humanity through such unkindly, wide open, all-seeing eyes?

Worth, seated across from me on the other side of the fire, stared straight into the leaping blaze; but I doubted if that was what he saw. On his face was the look which I had come to know, of the dignified householder who had gone in and shut the door on whatever of dismay and confusion might be in his private affairs. I began to read his father's version of the separation from his mother, with its ironic references to her most intimate friend.

"Marion would like to see Laura Bowman ship Tony and marry Jim Edwards. I swear the modern woman has played bridge so long that her idea of the most serious obligation in life—the marriage vow—is, 'Never mind. If you don't like the hand you have got, shuffle, cut, and deal again!'"

I dropped the book to my knee and looked over at Worth, asking,

"This Mrs. Dr. Bowman that we met last night at Tait's—she was a special friend of your mother's?"

"They were like sisters—in more than one way." I knew without his telling it that he alluded to their common misfortune of being both unhappily married. His mother, a woman of more force than the other, had gained her freedom.

"Femina Priores." I came on an entry standing oddly alone. "Marion is to secure the divorce—at my suggestion. I have demanded that our son share his time between us."

Again I let the book down on my knee and looked across at the silent fellow there. And I had heard him compassionate Barbara Wallace for having painful memories of her childhood! I believe he was at that moment more at peace with his father than he had ever been in his life—and that he grieved that this was so. I knew, too, that the forgiveness and forgetting would not extend to these pitiless records. Without disturbing him, I laid the book I held down and scouted forward for things more recent.

"Laura Bowman"—through one entry after another Gilbert kicked that poor woman's name like a football. Very fine and righteous and high-minded in what he said, but writing it out in full and calling her painful difficulties—the writhing of a sensitive, high-strung woman, mismated with a tyrant—an example notably stupid and unoriginal, of the eternal matrimonial triangle. Bowman evidently kept his sympathy, so far as such a nature can be said to entertain that gentle emotion.

I ran through other volumes, merciless recitals, now and again, of the shortcomings of his associates or servants; a cold blooded misrepresentation of his son; a sneer for the affair with Ina Thornhill, with the dictum, sound enough no doubt, that the girl herself did the courting, and that she had no conscience—"The extreme society type of parasite," he put it. And then the account of his break with Edwards.

Dr. Bowman, it seems, had come to Gilbert in confidence for help, saying that his wife had left his house in the small hours the previous night, nothing but an evening wrap pulled over her night wear, and that he guessed where she could be found, since she hadn't gone to her mother's. He asked Gilbert to be his ambassador with messages of pardon. Didn't want to go himself, because that would mean a row, and he was determined, if possible, to keep the thing private, giving a generous reason: that he wasn't willing to disgrace the woman. All of which, after he'd written it down, the diarist discredited with his brief comment to the effect that Tony Bowman shunned publicity because scandal of the sort would hurt his practice, and his pride as well, and that he didn't go out to Jim Edwards's ranch because, under these circumstances, he would be afraid of Jim.

Thomas Gilbert did the doctor's errand for him. The entry concerning it occupied the next day. I read between the lines how much he enjoyed his position of god from the machine, swooping down on the two he found out there, estimating their situation and behavior in his usual hair-splitting fashion, sitting as a court of last appeal. It was of no use for Edwards to explain to him that Laura Bowman was practically crazy when she walked out of her husband's house as the culmination of a miserable scene—the sort that had been more and more frequent there of late—carrying black-and-blue marks where he had grabbed and shaken her. The statement that it was by mere chance she encountered Jim seemed to have made Gilbert smile, and Jim's taking of her out to the ranch, the assertion that it was the only thing to do, that she was sick and delirious, had inspired Gilbert to say to him, quite neatly, "You weren't delirious, I take it—not more than usual."

Then he demanded that Laura go with him, at once, back to her husband, or out to her mother's. She considered the matter and chose to go back to Bowman, saying bitterly that her mother made the match in the first place, and stood always against her daughter and with her son-in-law whatever he did. Plainly it took all of Laura's persuasions to prevent actual blows between Gilbert and Edwards. Also, she would only promise to go back and live under Bowman's roof, but not as his wife—and the whole situation was much aggravated.

I followed Mr. Thomas Gilbert's observation of this affair: his amused understanding of how much Jim Edwards and Laura hated him; his private contempt for Bowman, to whom he continued to give countenance and moral support; his setting down of the quarrels, intimate, disastrous, between Bowman and his wife, as the doctor retailed them to him, the woman dragging herself on her knees to beg for her freedom, and his callous refusals; backed by threat of the wide publicity of a scandalous divorce suit, with Thomas Gilbert as main witness. I turned to Worth and asked,

"When will Edwards be here?"

"Any minute now." Worth looked at me queerly, but I went on,

"You said he phoned from the ranch. Did he answer you in person—from out there?"

"That's what I told you, Jerry."

My searching gaze made nothing of the boy's impassive face; I plunged again into the diaries, running down a page, getting the heading of a sentence, not delaying to go further unless I struck something which seemed to me important, and each minute thinking of the strangeness of a man like this killing himself. It was in the 1916 volume, that I made a discovery which surprised an exclamation from me.

"What would you call this, Worth? Your father's way of making corrections?"

"Corrections?" Worth spoke without looking around. "My father never made corrections—in anything." It was said without animus—a simple statement of fact.

"But look here." I held toward him the book. There were three leaves gone; that meant six pages, and the entries covered May 31 and June 1. I had verified that before I spoke to him, noticing that the statement of the weather for May 31 remained at the foot of the last page left, while a run-over on the page beyond the missing ones had been marked out. It had nothing to do with the weather. As nearly as I could make out with the reading glass I held over it, the words were, "take the woman for no other than she appears."

"Worth," I urged, "give me your attention for a minute here. You say your father did not make corrections, but one of the diaries is cut. The records of two days are gone. Were those pages stolen?"

"How should I know?" said Worth, and added, helpfully, "Pity they didn't steal the whole lot. That would have been a relief."

There were voices and the sound of steps outside. I shoved the diary back into its place on the shelf, and turned to see Barbara at the broken door with Jim Edwards. She came in, her clear eyes a little wide, but the whole young personality of her quite composed. Edwards halted at the door, a haggard eye roving over the room, until it encountered the blood-stain on the rug, when it sheered abruptly, and fixed itself on Worth, who crossed to shake hands, with a quiet,

"Come in, won't you, Jim? Or would you rather go up to the house?"

Keenly I watched the man as he stood there struggling for words. There was color on his thin cheeks, high under the dark eyes; it made him look wild. The chill of the drive, or pure nervousness, had him shaking.

"Thank you—the house, I think," he said rather incoherently. Yet he lingered. "Barbara's been telling me," he said in that deep voice of his with the air of one who utters at random. "Worth,—had you thought that it might have been happening down here, right at the time we all sat at Tait's together?"

He was in a condition to spill anything. A moment more and we should have heard what it was that had him in such a grip of horror. But as I glanced at Worth, I saw him reply to the older man's question with a very slight but very perceptible shake of the head. It had nothing to do with what had been asked him; to any eye it said more plainly than words, "Don't talk; pull yourself together." I whirled to see how Edwards responded to this, and found our group had a new member. In the door stood a decent looking, round faced Chinaman. Edwards had drawn a little inside the threshold for him, but very little, and waited, still shaken, perturbed, hat in hand, apparently ready to leave as soon as the Oriental got out of his way.

"Hello," the yellow man saluted us.

"Hello, Chung," Worth rejoined, and added, "Looks good to see you again."

I was relieved to hear that. It showed me that the cook, anyhow, had not seen Worth last night in Santa Ysobel.

"Just now I hea' 'bout Boss." Chung's eye went straight to the stain on the rug, exactly as Edwards' had done, but it stopped there, and his Oriental impassiveness was unmoved. "Too bad," he concluded, thrust the fingers of one hand up the sleeve of the other and waited.

"Where you been all day?" I said quickly.

"My cousin' ranch."

"His cousin's got a truck farm over by Medlow—or used to have," Worth supplied, and Chung looked to him, instantly.

"You sabbee," he said hopefully. "I go iss mo'ning—all same any day—not find out 'bout Boss. Too bad. Too velly much bad." A pause, then, looking around at the four of us, "I get dinner?"

"We've all had something to eat, Chung," Worth said. "You go now fix room. Make bed. To-night, I stay; Mr. Boyne here stay; Mr. Edwards stay. Fix three rooms. Good fire."

"All 'ite," the chink would have ducked out then, Jim Edwards after him, but I stopped the proceedings with,

"Hold on a minute—while we're all together—tell us about that visitor Mr. Gilbert had last night." I was throwing a rock in the brush-pile in the chance of scaring out a rabbit. I was shooting the question at Chung, but my eye was on Edwards. He glared back at me for a moment, then couldn't stand the strain and looked away. At last the Chinaman spoke.

"Not see um. I go fix bed now."

"Hold on," again I stopped him. "Worth, tell him those beds can wait. Tell him it's all right to answer my questions."

"'S all 'ite?" Chung studied us in turn. I was keeping an inconspicuous eye on Edwards as I reassured him. "'S all 'ite," he repeated with a falling inflection this time, and finished placidly, "You want know 'bout lady?"

"What's all this?" Edwards spoke low.

"About a lady who came to see Mr. Gilbert last night," I explained shortly; then, "Who was she, Chung?"

"Not see um good." The Chinaman shook his head gravely.

"Did she come here—to the study?" I asked. He nodded. Worth moved impatiently, and the Chinaman caught it. He fixed his eyes on Worth. I stepped between them. "Chung," I said sharply. "You knew the lady. Who was she?"

"Not see um good," he repeated, plainly reluctant. "She hold hand by face—cly, I think."

"Good God!" Edwards broke out startlingly. "If we're going to hear an account of all the women that Tom lectured and made cry—leave me out of it."

"One woman will do, for this time," I said to him drily, "if it's the right one," and he subsided, turning away. But he did not go. With burning eyes, he stood and listened while I cross-examined the unwilling Chung and got apparently a straight story showing that some woman had come to the side door of his master's house shortly after dinner Saturday night, walked to the study with that master, weeping, and that her voice when he heard it, sounded like that of some one he knew. I tried every way in the world to get him to be specific about this voice; did it sound like that of a young lady? an old lady? did he think it was some one he knew well, or only a little? had he been hearing it much lately? All the usual tactics; but Chung's placid obstinacy was proof against them. He kept shaking his head and saying over and over,

"No hear um good," until Barbara, standing watchfully by, said,

"Chung, you think that lady talk like this?"

As she spoke, after the first word, a change had come into her voice; it was lighter, higher, with a something in its character faintly reminiscent to my ear. And Chung bobbed his head quickly, nodding assent. In her mimicry he had recognized the tones of the visitor. I glanced at Edwards: he looked positively relieved.

"I'll go to the house, Worth," he said with more composure in his tone than I would have thought a few moments ago he could in any way summon. "You'll find me there." And he followed the Chinaman up the moonlit path.

CHAPTER XII

For a long while she made no reply, studying Worth's profile as he stared steadily into the fire. No signal passed between them, but finally she came to her decision and said,

"Mr. Boyne, ask Worth what he thinks I ought to say to that."

Instead, "Who was it, Worth?" I snapped, speaking to the back of the young man's head. The red came up into the girl's face, and her eyes flashed; but Worth merely shrugged averted shoulders.

"You can search me," he said, and left it there.

I looked from one to the other of these young people: Worth, whom I loved as I might have my own son had I been so fortunate as to possess one; this girl who had made a place of warmth for herself in my heart in less than a day, whose loyalty to my boy I was certain I might count on. How different this affair must look to them from the face it wore to me, an old police detective, who had bulled through many inquiries like this, the corpse itself, perhaps, lying in the back of the room, instead of the blood-stain we had there on the rug; what was practically the Third Degree being applied to relatives and friends; with the squalid prospect of a court trial ahead of us all. If they'd seen as much of this sort of thing as I had, they wouldn't be holding me up now, tying my hands that were so willing to help, by this fine-spun, overstrained notion of shielding a woman's name.

"Barbara," I began—I knew an appeal to the unaccountable Worth would get me nowhere—"the facts we've got to deal with here are a possible murder, with this lad the last person known—by us, of course—to have seen his father alive. We know, too, that they quarreled bitterly. We know all this. Outside people, men who are interested, and more or less hostile, were aware that Worth needed money—needs it yet, for that matter—a large sum. I suppose it is a question of time when it will be known that Worth came here last night; and when it is known, do you realize what it will mean?"

Worth had sat through this speech without the quiver of a muscle, and no word came from him as I paused for a reply. Little Barbara, big eyes boring into me as though to read all that was in the back of my mind, nodded gravely but did not speak. I crossed to the shelves and took down the diary whose leather back bore the date of 1916. As I opened it, finding the place where its pages had been removed, I continued,

"You and I know—we three here know—" I included Worth in my statement—"that the crime was neither suicide nor patricide; but it is likely we must have proof of that fact. Unless we find the murderer—"

"But the motive—there would have to be motive."

Barbara struck right at the core of the thing. She didn't check at the mere material facts of how a murder could have been done, who might have had opportunity. The fundamental question of why it should have been was her immediate interest.

"I believe I've the motive here," I said and thrust the mutilated volume into her hand. "Some one stole these leaves out of Mr. Gilbert's diary. The books are filled with intimate details of the affairs of people—things which people prefer should not be known—names, details and dates written out completely. It's likely murder was done last night to get possession of those pages."

She went to the desk and glanced over the book; not the minute examination with the reading glass which I had given it; that mere flirt of a glance which, when I had first noticed it the night before at Tait's, skimming across that description of Clayte, had seemed so inadequate. Then she turned to me.

"Mr. Gilbert cut these out himself," she pronounced.

That brought Worth's head up and his face around to stare at her.

"You say my father removed something he had written?" he asked. Barbara nodded. "He never changed a decision—and those books were his decisions."

"Then this wasn't a correction, but he cut it out. Can't you see, Mr. Boyne? Those leaves were removed by a man who respected the book and was as careful in his mutilation of it as he was in its making. It is precisely written—I'm referring to workmanship, not its literary quality—carefully margined, evenly indented on the paragraph beginnings. And so, in this removal of three leaves, the cutting was done with a sharp knife drawn along the edge of a ruler—" I picked up from where they lay on the blotting pad, a small pearl-handled knife, its sharp blade open, and the ruler I had seen when looking down from the skylight, and placed them before her. She nodded and continued,

"There is a bit of margin left so no other leaves can be loosened by this removal. The marking out of the run-over has been neatly ruled, done so recently that the ink is not yet black—done with that ink in the stand. It was blotted with this." She lifted a hand-blotter to show me the print of a line of ink. There were other markings on the face of the soft paper, and I took it eagerly. Barbara smiled.

"You will get little from that," she said. I had not even seen her give it attention. "Scattered words—and parts of words, blotted frequently as they were written. Perhaps, with care, we might learn something, but we can turn more easily to the last pages of his diary and—"

"There are no last pages," I interrupted. "The 1920 book is missing."

"Gone—stolen?" she exclaimed. It brought a smile to my face. For the first time in my experience of this pretty, little bunch of brains, she had hazarded a guess.

"Gone," I admitted coolly—a bit sarcastically. "I've no reason to say stolen."

"But—yes, you have—you have, Mr. Boyne! If it is gone, it was stolen. Is it gone—are you sure it is gone?" Eagerly her eyes were searching desk, cabinet, the shelf where the other diaries made their long row. I satisfied her on that score.

"I have searched the study thoroughly; it is not in this room."

"Was here last night," Worth cut in. "I saw it on the desk."

"And was stolen last night," Barbara reaffirmed, quickly. "These books are too big to be slipped into a pocket, so we can't believe it was left upon Mr. Gilbert's person; and he wouldn't lend it—wouldn't willingly let it go from his possession. So it was stolen; and the man who stole it—killed him." She shuddered.

That was going too swift for me to follow, but I saw on Worth Gilbert's face his acceptance of it. Either conviction of Barbara's infallibility, or some knowledge locked up inside his own chest, made him certain the diary had been stolen, and the thief was his father's murderer. In a flash, I remembered his words, "putting every damn' word of our row into it," and I shot straight at him,

"Did you take that book, Worth?"

He only shook his head and answered,

"You heard what Bobs said, Jerry."

If he took the book he killed his father; that was Barbara's inference, Worth's acceptance. I threw back my shoulders to cast off the suspicion, then reached across to place my fingers under the girl's hand and pull from it the only record of that last written page, the blotter.

"Will you read me that?" I asked her. "Every word and part of a word—every letter?"

Her eyes smiled into mine with a reassurance that was like balm. Worth rose and found her a hand-glass on the mantel, passing it to her, and with this to reverse the scrawlings, she read and I wrote down in my memorandum book two complete words, two broken words and five single letters picked from overlying marks that were too confused to be decipherable. Though the three of us struggled with them, they held no meaning.

Worth's interest quickly ceased.

"I'll join Jim Edwards in the house," he said, but I stopped him.

"One minute, Worth. There was a woman visitor here last night. It would seem she carried away with her the diary of 1920 and three leaves from the book of 1916. I want you—you and Barbara—to tell me what you know that happened here in Santa Ysobel on the dates of the missing pages, May 31 and June 1, 1916."

Barbara accepted the task, turning that wonderful cinematograph memory back, and murmured,

"I never tried recollecting on just a bare date this way, but—" then glanced around at me and finished—"nothing happened to me in Santa Ysobel then, because I wasn't in Santa Ysobel. I was in San Francisco and—"

"And I was in Flanders, so that lets me out," Worth broke in brusquely. "I'll go into the house."

"Wait, Worth." I placed a hand on his shoulder. "Go on, Barbara; you had thought of something."

"Yes. Father died in January of that year, and in March I had to vacate the house. It had been sold, and they wanted to fix it over. I left Santa Ysobel on the eighteenth of March, but they didn't get into the house until June first."

Again Worth interrupted.

"Which jogs my memory for an unexciting detail." He smiled enigmatically. "I was jilted June first."

"In Flanders?" How many times had this lad been jilted?

"No. Right here. I wasn't here of course, but the letter which did the trick was written here, and bore that date—June one, 1916."

"How do you get the date so pat?"

"It was handed me by the mail orderly—I was on the Verdun sector then—on the morning of the Fourth of July. Remember the date the letter was written because of the quick time it made. Most of our mail took from six weeks to eternity. What are you smiling at, Bobs?"

"Just a little—you don't mind, do you?—at your saying you remember Ina's letter by the quick time it made in reaching you."

"Who bought your house, Barbara?" I asked her.

"Dr. Bowman—or rather Mrs. Bowman's uncle bought it and gave it to her."

"And they went in on the first of June, 1916?" I was all excitement, turning the pages of the diary to get to certain points I remembered. "What can either one of you tell me about the state of affairs at that time between Dr. Bowman and his wife—and that man who was just in here—Jim Edwards?"

Worth turned a hostile back; Barbara seemed to shrink in her chair. I hated like a whipping to pull this sort of stuff on them, but I knew that Barbara's knowledge of Worth's danger would reconcile her to whatever painful thing must be done, and I had to know who was that visitor of last night.

"Is that—that stuff in those damnable books?" I saw the hunch of Worth's broad shoulders.

"Some of it is—some of it has been cut out," I replied.

"And you connect Jim Edwards with this crime?"

"I don't connect him—he connects himself—by them, and by his manner."

"Burn them!" He faced me, came over and reached for the book. "Dump the whole rotten mess into the fire, Jerry, and be done with it."

"Easy said, but that would sure be a short cut to trouble. Tell me, I've got to know, if you think this man Edwards—under great provocation—capable of—well, of killing a fellow creature."