CHAPTER XVII

Getting down toward the Gilbert place, just beyond the corner, I flushed from the shadows of the pepper trees a bird I knew to be one of Dykeman's operatives. Watching his carefully careless progress on past the Gilbert lawn, then the Vandeman grounds, my eye was led to a pair who approached across the green from the direction of the bungalow. No mistaking the woman; even at this distance, height and the clean sweep of her walk, told me that this was the bride, Ina Vandeman. And the man strolling beside her—had he come with her from the house, or joined her on the cross-cut path?—could that be Worth Gilbert?

I sat in the roadster and gaped. The evening light—behind them, and dim enough at best—made their countenances fairly indistinguishable. At the gap in the hedge, they paused, and Mrs. Vandeman reached out, broke off a flower to fasten in his buttonhole, looking up into his face, talking quickly. Old stuff—but always good reliable old stuff. Then Worth saw me and hailed, "Hello, Jerry!" But he did not come to me, and I swung out of the machine to the sidewalk.

I heard the sobbing of the Ford truck; it went by, missing my runningboard by an inch, stopped at Vandeman's gate and Skeet discharged her cargo of clamor to stream across the sidewalk and up toward the bungalow. I saw Barbara, in the midst of the moving figures, suddenly stop, knew she had seen the two over there, and crossed to her, with a cheerful,

"He's here all right."

"Oh, yes," not looking toward the gap in the hedge, or at me. "He came on the same train with—with them."

Then some one from the porch yowled reproachfully for her to fetch those banners pronto, and with a little catching of breath, she ran on up the walk.

I turned back. Worth and Ina had moved on. Bronson Vandeman, well groomed, dressed as though he had just come in off the golf links, his English shoes and loud patterned stockings differentiating him from the crude outdoor man of the Coast, had joined them on the Gilbert lawn; his genial greeting to me let his bride get by with a mere bow, turning at once back to her house by the front walk. But rather to my annoyance, Vandeman came bounding up the steps after us. I judged Worth must have invited him.

Chung carried my suitcase upstairs, and lingered a minute in my room. I'll swear it wasn't merely to get the tip for which he thanked me, but with the idea of showing me in some recondite, Oriental fashion that he was glad I'd come. This interested me. The people who were glad to have me in Santa Ysobel at this time belonged on the clean side of my ledger. Then I went downstairs to find Vandeman still in the living room, sprawled at ease beside the window, looking round with a display of his fine teeth, reaching a hand to pull in the chair Worth set for me.

"Well, Jerry," that young man prompted, indicating by a careless gesture the smokers' tray on the table beside me, "there is time before dinner for the tale of your exploits. How's my friend Steve?"

I began to select a cigar, and said shortly,

"It's all in reports waiting for you at my office."

"Yes." Worth ignored my irritation. "Tell it. What'd you do down south?"

"Just back from the south yourself, aren't you?" I countered.

"Sure," airily. "But I wasn't there to butt in on your game. Did you find that Skeels was Clayte?"

I merely looked over the flame of my match at that small-town society man, smiling back at me with a show of polite interest.

"Go on," Worth interpreted. "Vandeman knows all about it. I tried to sell him a few shares of stock in the suitcase, so he'll take an interest in the game; but he's too much the tight-wad to buy."

"Oh, no," deprecated Vandeman. "Just no gambler; hate to take a chance." He ran his fingers through his hair, tossing it up with a gesture I had noticed when he came back from the dance at Tait's.

"All right—apology accepted," Worth nodded. "Anyway, you didn't. Well, Jerry?"

Vandeman waited a moment with natural curiosity, then, as I still said nothing, giving my attention to my smoke, moved reluctantly to rise, saying,

"That means I'd better chase along and let you two talk business."

"No. Sit tight," from Worth.

I was mad clear through, and disturbed and apprehensive, too. I managed a brief, dry statement of the outcome in the south. Worth hailed it with,

"Skeels lurks in the jungle! Life still holds a grain of interest."

"Why the devil couldn't you keep me advised of your movements?" I demanded.

"Dykeman's hounds," he grinned. "Had them guessing. They'd have picked me up if I'd gone to your office."

"You could have written or wired. They've picked you up anyway," I grunted. "One's on the job now. Saw him as I came in."

"Eh? What's that?" cried Vandeman, a man snooping in the shrubbery outside getting more attention from him than one dodging pursuit three hundred miles away. "What do you mean, hounds?" and when he had heard the explanation of Dykeman's trailers, "I call that intolerable!"

"Oh, I don't know." Worth reached over my shoulder for a cigarette. "Lose 'em whenever I like."

I wasn't so certain. There were men in my employ he couldn't shake. Perhaps those reports in Dykeman's desk might have offered some surprises to this cock-sure lad. My exasperation at Worth mounted as I listened to Vandeman talking.

"Those bank people should do one thing or another," he gave his opinion. "Just because you got gay with them and handed them their payment in the suitcase it left in, they've no right to have you watched like a criminal. In a small town like this, such a thing will ruin a man's standing."

"If he has any standing," Worth laughed.

"See here," Vandeman's smile was persuasive. "Don't let what I said out in front embitter you."

"I'll try not to."

"Mr. Boyne"—Vandeman missed the sarcasm—"when I got back to this town to-day, what do you suppose I found? The story going around that a quarrel with Worth, over money, drove his father to take his own life."

"That's my business here," I nodded. And when he looked his surprise, "To stop such stories."

He stared at me, frankly puzzled for a moment, then said,

"Well, of course you know, and I know, that they're scurrilous lies; but just how will you stop them?"

I had intended my remark to stand as it was; but Worth filled in the pause after Vandeman's question with,

"Jerry's here to get the truth of my father's murder, Bronse."

"Murder?" The mere naked word seemed to shock Vandeman. His sort clothe and pad everything—even their speech. "I didn't know any one entertained the idea your father was murdered. He couldn't have been—not the way it happened."

"Nevertheless we think he was."

"Oh, but Boyne—start a thing like that, and think of the talk it'll make! They'll commence at once saying that there was nobody but Worth to profit by his father's death."

"Don't worry, Mr. Vandeman." He made me hot. "We know where to dig up the motive for the crime."

"You mean the diaries?" Worth's voice sounded unbelievably from beside me. "Nothing doing there, Jerry. I've burned them."

I sat and choked down the swears. Yet, looking back on it, I saw plainly that Jerry Boyne was the man who deserved kicking. I ought never to have left them with him.

"You read them and burned them?" said Vandeman.

"Burned them without reading," Worth's impatient tones corrected.

"Without reading!" the other echoed, startled. Then, after a long pause, "Oh—I say—pardon me, but—but ought that to have been done? Surely not. Worth—if you'd read your father's diaries for the past few years—I don't believe you'd have a doubt that he committed suicide—not a doubt."

Worth sat there mute. Myself, I was rather curious as to what Vandeman would say; I had read much in those diaries. But when it came, it was the same old line of talk one hears when there's a suicide: Gilbert was a lonely man; his life hadn't been happy; he cut himself off from people too much. Vandeman said that of late he believed he was pretty nearly the only intimate the dead man had. This last gave him an interest in my eyes. I broke in on his generalities to ask him bluntly why he was so certain the death was suicide.

"Mr. Gilbert was breaking up; had been for two years or more. Worth's been away; he's not seen it; but I can tell you, Boyne, his father's mind was affected."

Worth let that pass, though I could see he wasn't convinced by Vandeman's sentimentalities, any more than I was. After the man had gone, I turned on Worth sharply, with,

"Why the devil did you tell that pink-tea proposition about your dealings with the Van Ness Avenue bank?"

"Safety valve, I guess. I get up too heavy a load of steam, and it's easy to blow it off to Vandeman. Told him most of it in the smoker, coming up. You'll talk about anything in a smoker."

"Oh, will you?" I said in exasperation. "And you'll burn anything, I suppose, that a match'll set fire to?"

"Go easy, Jerry Boyne." His chin dropped to his chest, he sat glowering out through the window. "Cleansing fires for that sort of garbage," he said finally. "I burned them on the day of his funeral."

CHAPTER XVIII

Through the open window had followed a half dozen more of the Blossom Festival crowd, Barbara and Bronson Vandeman among them. Ina paid no attention to any one, standing there, her height increased by the long, straight lines of the costume, her bisque doll features given a strange, pallid dignity by the raw magnificence of its crusted purple and crimson and green and gold embroidery and the dead black wig.

"Isn't it an exquisite thing, Worth?" displaying herself before him. "Bronse has a complete Mandarin costume; we lead the grand march as the emperor and empress of Mongolia. Don't you think it's a good idea?"

"First rate." Worth spoke in his usual unexcited fashion, and it was difficult to say whether he meant the oriental idea or the appearance of the girl who stood before him. She came close and offered the cuff of one of her sleeves to show him the embroidery, lifting a delicate chin to display the jade buttons at the neck.

Barbara over on the other side of the room refused to meet my eye. Mrs. Bowman, a big fur piece pulled up around her throat, shivered. I met half a dozen Santa Ysobel people whose names I've forgotten. I could see that Bronson Vandeman socially took the lead here, that everybody looked to him. The room was a babel of talk, when a few minutes later the doorbell rang in orthodox fashion, and Chung ushered Cummings in upon the general confusion. Some of the bunch knew and spoke to him; others didn't and had to be presented; it took the first of his time and attention. He only got a chance for one swipe at me, a low-toned, sarcastic,

"Made a mistake to duck me, Boyne."

I didn't think it worth while to answer that. Presently I saw him standing with Barbara. He was evidently effecting a switch of his theater engagement to the ball, for I heard Skeet's,

"Mr. Cummings wants a ticket! He'll need two! Ten dollars, Mr. Cummings—five apiece."

"No, no—Skeet," Barbara laughed embarrassedly. "Mr. Cummings was just joking. He'll not be here Saturday night."

"I'll come back for it," hand in pocket.

"It's a masquerade—" Barbara hesitated.

"Bring my costume with me from San Francisco."

"I'm not sure—" again Barbara hesitated; Skeet cut in on her,

"Why, Barbie Wallace! It's what you came to Santa Ysobel for—the Bloss. Fes. ball. And to think of your getting a perfectly good man, right at the last minute this way, and not having to tag on to Bronse and Ina or something like that! I think you're the lucky girl," and she clutched Cummings' offered payment to stow it with other funds she had collected.

At last they got themselves out of the room and left us alone with Cummings. He had carried through his little deal with Barbara as though it meant considerable to him, but I knew that his errand with Worth was serious, and put in quickly,

"I intended to write or phone you to-morrow, Cummings."

"Well," the lawyer worked his mouth a bit under that bristly mustache and looked at Worth, "it might have saved you some embarrassment if you'd been warned of my errand here to-night—earlier, that is. I suppose Captain Gilbert has told you that I phoned him, when I failed to connect with you, that I was coming here—and what I was coming for?"

"I didn't tell Jerry," Worth picked up a cigarette. "Couldn't very well tell him what you were coming for. Don't know myself."

The words were blunt; really I think there was no intention to offend, only the simple statement of a fact; but I could see Cummings beginning to simmer, as he inquired,

"Does that mean you didn't understand my words on the phone, or that you understood them and couldn't make out what I meant by them?"

"Little of both," allowed Worth. Cummings stepped close to him and let him have it direct:

"I'm here to-night, Captain Gilbert, as executor of your father's estate. I have filed the will to-day. I might have done so earlier, but when I inventoried this place (you remember, the day before the funeral—you were here at the time) I failed to locate a considerable portion of your father's estate."

"You failed to locate? All the estate's here; this house, the down-town properties. What do you mean, failed to locate?"

"I was not alluding to realty," said Cummings. "It's my duty to locate and report to the court the present whereabouts of seventy-five thousand dollars worth of stock in the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank. Can you declare to me as executor, where it is? And, if any other person than your father placed it in its present whereabouts, are you ready to declare to me how and when it came into that person's possession?"

"Quite a lot of words, Cummings; but it doesn't mean anything," Worth said casually. "You know where that bank stock is and who put it there."

"Officially, I do not know. Officially, I demand to be told."

"Unofficially, answer it for yourself." Worth turned his back on the lawyer to get a match from the mantel.

"Very well. My answer is that I intend to find out how and when that bank stock which formed a part of your payment to the Van Ness Avenue bank disappeared from this house."

I admit I was scared. Here was the first gun of the coming battle; and I was sure this enemy, who stood now looking through half closed eyes at the lad's back, would have poisoned gas among his weapons. He had emphasized the "when." He believed that the stories of Worth's night visit to his father were true; that the implied denial by Barbara and myself in my office, was false; that Worth had either received the stock from his father that Saturday night or taken it unlawfully. I was sure that it was the stock certificates which I had seen Worth take from the safe-compartment of the sideboard in the small hours of Monday morning; a breach of legal form which it would be possible for a friendly executor to pass over.

"Cummings, Worth inherits everything under his father's will; what's the difference about a small irregularity in taking possession? He—"

"Never explain, Jerry," Worth shut me up. "Your friends don't need it, and your enemies won't believe it."

Cummings had stood where he was since the first of the interview. His face went strangely livid. There was more in this than a legal fight.

"Yes, Boyne's a fool to try to help your case with explanations, Gilbert," he choked out. "I'll see that both of you get a chance to answer questions elsewhere—under oath. Good evening." He turned and left.

He had the best of it all around. I endeavored for some time to get before Worth the dangers of his high-handed defiance of law, order, probate judges, and the court's officers, in the person of Allen G. Cummings, attorney and his father's executor. He listened, yawned—and suggested that it must be nearly bedtime. I gave it up, and we went—I, at least, with a sense of danger ahead upon me—to our rooms.

Along in the middle of the night I waked to the knowledge that a casement window was pounding somewhere in the house. For a while I lay and listened in that helpless, exaggerated resentment one feels at such a time. I'd drop off, get nearly to sleep, only to be jerked broad awake again by the thudding. Listening carefully I decided that the bothersome window was in Worth's room, and finally I got up sense and spunk enough to roll out of bed, stick my feet into slippers, and sneak over with the intention of locking it.

The room was dimly lighted from the street lamps, far away as they were; I made my way across it. Worth's deep, regular breathing was quite undisturbed. I had trouble with the catch, went and felt over the bureau and found his flashlight, fixed the window by its help, and returning it, remembering how near I came to knocking it off the bureau top, thought to put it in a drawer which stood half open.

As I aimed it downward, its circle of illumination showed something projecting a corner from beneath the swirl of ties and sheaf of collars—a book—a red morocco-bound book. Mechanically I nudged the stuff away with the torch itself. What lay there turned me cold. It was the 1920 diary!

My fingers relaxed; the flashlight fell with a thump, as I let out an exclamation of dismay. A sleepy voice inquired from the bed,

"Hi, you Jerry! What you up to in here?"

For answer, I dragged out the book, went over to the bed, and switched on the reading lamp there. Worth scowled in the glare, and flung his arms up back of his head for a pillow to raise it a bit.

"Yeah," blinking amiably at the volume. "Meant to tell you. Found it to-day when I was down in the repair pit at the garage. It had been stuck in the drainpipe there."

"And I suppose," I said savagely, "that if I hadn't come onto it now, you'd have burned this, too."

"Don't get sore, Jerry," he said. "I saved it," and he yawned.

I had an uncontrollable impulse to have a look at that last entry, which would record the bitter final quarrel between this boy and his father. No difficulty about finding the spot; as I raised the book in my hands it fell open of itself at the place. I looked and what I saw choked me—got cross-wise in my throat for a moment so no words could come out. I stuck the book under his nose, and held it there till I could whisper.

"Worth, did you do this?"

The last written page was numbered 49; on it was recorded the date, March sixth; the weather, cloudy, clearing late in the afternoon; the fact that the sun had set red in a cloudless sky; and it ended abruptly in the middle of a phrase. The leaf that carried page 50 had been torn out; not cut away carefully as were those leaves in the earlier book, but ripped loose, grabbed with clutching fingers that scarred and twisted the leaf below!

He shoved my hand away and stared at me. For a moment I thought everything was over. Certainly I could not be a very appealing sight, standing there sweating with fear, my hair all stuck up on my head where I'd clawed it, shivering in my nightclothes more from miserable nervousness than from cold; but somehow those eyes of his softened; he gave me one of the looks that people who care for Worth will go far to get, and said quietly,

"You see what you're doing? I told you I didn't steal the book, so that clears me in your mind of being the murderer. Now you're after me about this torn-out page. If I'd torn it out and stolen it—you and I would know what it would mean."

"But, boy—," I began, when he suffered a change of heart.

"Get out of here! Take that damn book and leave."

He heaved himself over in the bed, hunching the covers about his ears, turning his back on me. As I crept away, I heard him finish in a sort of mutter—as though to himself—

"I'm sorry for you, Jerry Boyne."

CHAPTER XIX

"Once, you crazy Indian!" and the question of sound-proof walls was settled. Nobody heard the shot that killed Gilbert twenty feet away from the study if the door was closed. Mrs. Thornhill's ravings, as described in Skeet's letter to Barbara, were merely delirium.

I walked out around the driveway to the early morning streets of Santa Ysobel. The little town looked as peaceful and innocent as a pan of milk. In an hour or so, its ways would be full of people rushing about getting ready for the carnival, a curious contrast to my own business, sinister, tragic. It seemed to me that two currents moved almost as one, the hidden, dark part under—for there must be those in the town who knew the crime was murder; the murderer himself must still be here—and the foam of noisy gayety and blossoms riding atop. A Blossom Festival; the boyhood of the year; and I was in the midst of it, hunting a murderer!

An hour later I talked to Barbara in the stuffy little front room at Capehart's, brow-beaten by the noise of Sarah getting breakfast on the other side of the thin board partition; more disconcerted by the girl's manner of receiving the information of how I had found the 1920 diary hidden in Worth's bureau drawer. There was a swift, very personal anger at me. I had to clear myself instantly and thoroughly of any suspicion of believing for a moment that Worth himself had stolen or mutilated the book, protesting,

"I don't—I don't! Listen, Barbara—be reasonable!"

"That means 'Barbara, be scared!' And I won't. When they're scared, people make mistakes."

"You might see differently if you'd been there last night when Cummings made his charge against Worth. That seventy two thousand dollars Worth carried up to the city Monday morning, he had taken from his father's safe the night before."

For a minute she just looked at me, and not even Worth Gilbert's dare-devil eyes ever held a more inclusively defiant light than those big, soft, dark ones of hers.

"Well—wasn't it his?"

"All right," I said shortly. "I'm not here to talk of Worth's financial methods; they're scheduled to get him into trouble; but let that pass. Look through this book and you'll see who it is I'm after."

She had already opened the volume, and began to glance along the pages. She made a motion for me to wait. I leaned back in my chair, and it was only a few moments later that she looked up to say,

"Don't make the arrest, Mr. Boyne. You have nothing here against Eddie—for murder."

Because I doubted myself, I began to scold, winding up,

"All the same, if that gink hasn't jumped town, I'll arrest him."

"It would be a good deal more logical to arrest him if he had jumped the town," Barbara reminded me. "If you really want to see him, Mr. Boyne, you'll find him at the garage around on the highway. He's working for Bill."

That was a set-back. A fleeing Eddie Hughes might have been hopeful; an Eddie Hughes who gave his employer back-talk, got himself fired, and then settled down within hand-reach, was not so good a bet. Barbara saw how it hit me, and offered a suggestion.

"Mr. Boyne, Worth and I are taking a hike out to San Leandro canyon this afternoon to get ferns for the decorating committee. Suppose you come along—anyhow, a part of the way—and have a quiet talk, all alone with us. Don't do anything until you have consulted Worth."

"All right—I'll go you," I assented, and half past two saw the three of us, Worth in corduroys and puttees, Barbara with high boots and short, dust-brown skirt, tramping out past the homes of people toward the open country. At the Vandeman place Skeet's truck was out in front, piled with folding chairs, frames, light lumber, and a lot of decorative stuff. The tall Chinaman came from the house with another load.

"You Barbie Wallace!" the flapper howled. "Aren't you ashamed to be walking off with Worth and Mr. Boyne both, and good men scarce as hen's teeth in Santa Ysobel to-day!"

"I'm not walking off with them—they're walking off with me," Barbara laughed at her.

"Shameless one!" Skeet drawled. "I see you let Mr. Cummings have a day off—aren't you the kind little boss to 'em!"

I just raised my brows at Barbara, and she explained a bit hastily,

"Skeet thinks she has to be silly over the fact that Mr. Cummings has gone up to town, I suppose." She added with fine indifference, "He'll be back in the morning."

"You bet he'll be back in the morning," Worth assured the world.

"Now what does he mean by that, Mr. Boyne?"

"He means Cummings is out after him."

"I don't," Worth contradicted me personally. "I mean he's after Bobs. She knows it. Look at her."

She glanced up at me from under her hat-brim, all the stars out in those shadowy pools that were her eyes. The walk had brought sumptuous color to her cheeks, where the two extra deep dimples began to show.

"You both may think," she began with a sobriety that belied the dimples and shining eyes, "looking on from the outside, that Mr. Cummings has an idea of, as Skeet would say, 'rushing' me; but when we're alone together, about all he talks of is Worth."

"Bad sign," Worth flung over a shoulder that he pushed a little in advance of us. "Takes the old fellows that way. Their notion of falling for a girl is to fight all the other Johnnies in sight. Guess you've got him going, Bobs."

I walked along, chewing over the matter. She'd estimated Cummings fairly, as she did most things that she turned that clear mind of hers on; but her lack of vanity kept her from realizing, as I did, that he was in the way to become a dangerous personal enemy to Worth. His self-interest, she thought, would eventually swing him to Worth's side. She didn't as yet perceive that a motive more powerful than self-interest had hold of him now.

"Why, Mr. Boyne," she answered as though I'd been speaking my thoughts aloud, "I've known Mr. Cummings for years and years. He never—"

"You said a mouthful there, Bobs." Worth halted, grinning, to interrupt her. "He never—none whatever. But he has now."

"He hasn't."

"Leave it to Jerry. Jerry saw him that first night in at Tait's; then afterward, in the office."

"Oh, come on!" Barbara started ahead impatiently. "What difference would it make."

They went on ahead of me, scrapping briskly, as a boy and girl do who have grown up together. I stumped along after and reflected on the folly of mankind in general, and that of Allen G. Cummings in particular. That careful, mature bachelor had seen this lustrous young creature blossom to her present perfection; he'd no doubt offered her safe and sane attention, when she came to live in San Francisco where they had friends in common. But it had needed Worth Gilbert's appearance on the scene to wake him up to his own real feeling. Forty-five on the chase of nimble sweet and twenty; Cummings was in for sore feet and humiliating tumbles—and we were in for the worst he could do to us. I sighed. Worth had more than one way of making enemies, it seemed.

At last we came in sight of the country club upon its rise of ground overlooking the golf links. The low, brown clubhouse, built bungalow fashion, with a long front gallery and gravel sweep, was swarming with people—the decorators. Motors came and went. The grounds were being strung with paper lanterns. We skirted these, and the links itself where there were two or three players, obstinate, defiant old men who would have their game in spite of forty blossom festivals—climbed a fence, and crossed the grass up to the crest of a little round hill, halting there for the view. It wasn't high, but standing free as it did, it commanded pretty nearly the entire Santa Ysobel district. Massed acres of pink and white, the great orchards ran one into the other without break for miles. The lanes between the trunks, diamonded like a harlequin's robe in mathematical primness, were newly turned furrows of rich, black soil, against which the gray or, sometimes, whitewashed trunks of apricot, peach and plum trees gave contrast. Then the cap of glorious blossoms, meeting overhead in the older orchards, with a warm blue sky above and puffs of clouds that matched the pure white of the plum trees' bloom.

The spot suited me well; we had left the town behind us; here neither Dykeman's spotter nor any one he hired to help him could get within listening distance, I dropped down on a bank; Worth and Barbara disposed themselves, he sprawling his length, she sitting cross-legged, just below him.

It wasn't easy to make a beginning. I knew it wouldn't do me any particular good with Worth to dwell on his danger. But I finally managed to lay fairly before them my case against Eddie Hughes, and I must say that, as I told it, it sounded pretty strong.

I didn't want to put too much stress on having found my evidence in the diaries; I knew Worth was as obstinate as a mule, and having said that he would not stand for any one being prosecuted on their evidence, he'd stick to it till the skies fell. I called on my memory of those pages, now unfortunately ashes and not get-atable, and explained that Worth's father hired Hughes directly after a jail-break at San Jose had roused the whole country. Three of the four escapes were rounded up in the course of a few days, but the fourth—known to us as Eddie Hughes—was safe in Thomas Gilbert's garage, working there as chauffeur, having been employed without recommendation on the strength of what he could do.

"And the low wages he was willing to take," Worth put in drily. "Old stuff, Jerry. I wasn't sure till you spilled it just now that my father was wise to it. But I knew. What you getting at?"

"Just this. When I talked to Hughes that first night I came down here with you, while we all supposed the death a suicide, he couldn't keep his resentment against your father, his hatred of him, from boiling over every time he was mentioned."

"Get on," said Worth wearily. "Father hired a jail-bird that came cheap. Probably put it to himself that he was giving the man a chance to go straight."

I glanced up. This was just about what I remembered Thomas Gilbert to have said in the entry that told of the hiring of Eddie. Worth nodded grimly at my startled face.

"Eddie's gone straight since then," he filled in. "That is, he's kept out of jail, which is going straight for Eddie. He'd certainly hate the man who held him as he's been held for five years. Not motive enough for murder though."

"There's more. The 1920 diary you gave me last night tells when and why the extra bolts were put on the study doors. Your father had been missing liquor and cigars and believed Hughes was taking them."

"Pilfering!" with an expression of distaste. "That doesn't—"

"Hold on!" I stopped him. "On February twelfth your father left money, marked coin and paper money, as if by accident, on the top of the liquor cabinet; not exposed, but dropped in under the edge of the big ash tray so it might look as though it were forgotten—in a sense, lost there."

"How much?" came the quick question.

"Fifty one dollars." He looked around at me.

"Just one dollar above the limit of petty larceny; a hundred cents added to put it in the felony class that meant state's prison. So he could have sent Eddie to the pen,—eh? I guess you've got a motive there, Boyne."

"Well—er—" I squirmed over my statement, blurting out finally. "Hughes didn't take the money."

"Knew it was a trap," Worth's laugh was bitter. "And hated the man who cold-bloodedly set it to catch him. If he didn't take it, don't you think he counted it?"

"Worth," I said sharply. "Your father put those bolts on—and continued to find that he was being robbed. He was mad about it. Any man would be. Say what you will, no one likes to find that persons in his employ are stealing from him. The aggravating thing was that he couldn't bring it home to Hughes, though he was sure of the fact."

"So he went back to what he had known of Eddie when he hired him? After profiting by it for five years, he was going to rake that up?"

"He was,"—a bit nettled—"and well within his rights to do so. Three weeks before he was shot, he wrote that he'd started the inquiry. There was no further mention of the matter in the book as it stands, but don't you see that the result of the inquiry must have been on that torn-out last page? Eddie's Saturday night alibi won't hold water. His cannery girl, of course, will swear he was with her; but there's no corroborating testimony. No one saw them together from nine till twelve."

Dead silence dropped on us, with the white clouds standing like witnesses in the blue above, the wind bringing now and again on its scented wings little faint echoes of the noise down at the clubhouse.

"What more do you want?" Both young faces were set against me, cold and hostile. "Here was motive, opportunity, a suspect capable of the deed. My theory is that Mr. Gilbert came in on Hughes, caught him in the act of stealing from the cabinet. Hughes jumped for the pistol over the fireplace, got it, fired the fatal shot, and placed the dead man's fingers about the butt of the gun. Then he picked up the diary lying on the table, tore out the leaf about himself, and poked the rest of the book down the drain pipe."

"And the shot?" Worth resisted me. "Why didn't the shot bring Chung on the run?"

"Because he couldn't hear it. Nobody'd hear it ten paces away. That's what I was trying out this morning. You told me I'd fired once. Well, I fired twice; once with the door shut, and neither you nor Chung heard it; afterward, with the door open—the report you registered."

"The blotter—and it had been used on that last page—showed no words to strengthen this theory of yours," said Barbara as confidently as though the little blue square had been clear print, instead of broken blurring. Perhaps it was clear to her. I was glad I'd given it a thorough reëxamination the night before.

"I think it does," I struggled against the tide, manfully, buoying myself up with the tracing of the blotter. "Here's the word 'demanded,' reasonably connected with the affair. The letters 'ller' may be the last end of 'caller,' or possibly 'fuller'; I noticed Gilbert spoke in a former entry of the bottle in the cabinet and Hughes snitching from it, and used the word 'fuller.' Here's the word 'Avenue,' complete, and Lizzie Watkins, Hughes' girl, lives on Myrtle Avenue."

The silence after that was fairly derisive. Worth broke it with an impatient,

"And the fact of the bolted doors throws all that stuff out."

"Well," I grunted, "Barbara deduced the slipping of some bolts to please you once—why can't she again?"

"Mr. Boyne," the girl spoke quickly, "it wouldn't help you a bit to be assured that Eddie Hughes could enter the study and leave it bolted behind him when he went out—help you to the truth, I mean. These facts you've gathered are all wabbly; they'll never in the world fit in trim and true. They're hardly facts at all. They're partial facts."

"Wouldn't help me?" I ejaculated. "It would cinch a case against him. We've got to have some one in jail, and that shortly. We're forced to."

"Forced?" Worth had sat up a little and reached far forward for a stone that lay among the weeds down there. He spoke to me sidewise with a challenging flicker of the eye. Barbara kept her lips tight shut.

"I need a prisoner," trying to correct my error; then burst out, "My Lord, children! An arrest isn't going to hurt a man like Hughes,—even if he proves to be innocent. It's an old story to him. Barbara, you said yourself that the man who stole the 1920 diary was the murderer."

"But I didn't say Eddie Hughes stole it." Her tone was significant, and it checked me. I couldn't remember what the deuce she had said that night. There recurred to me her mimicry of a woman's voice—Laura Bowman's as I believed—to determine through Chung who Thomas Gilbert's feminine visitor had been. Should that clue have been followed up before I moved on Eddie Hughes? Even as I got to this point, I heard Worth, punctuating his remarks with the whang of his rock on the bit of twig he was pounding to pieces,

"Boyne, I won't stand for any arrest being made except in all sincerity—the person you honestly believe to be the criminal."

"Does that mean you forbid me, in so many words, to proceed against Hughes on what I've got?"

"It does," Worth said. "You're not convinced yourself. Leave it alone."

"'Nough said!" I jumped to my feet. If he wouldn't let me lay hands on Hughes—there was nothing to do but go after the next one. "You two run along. Get your ferns. There's a man at the club here I have to see."

Barbara was afoot instantly; Worth lay looking at her for a moment, then heaved himself up, shook his shoulders, and stood beside her.

"Race you to the foot of the hill," she flashed up at him.

"You're on," he chuckled. "I'll give you a running start—to the tree down there—and beat you."

They were off. She ran like a deer. Worth got away as though he was in earnest. He caught her up just at the finish; I couldn't see which won; but they walked a few rods hand in hand.

Something swelled in my throat as I watched them away: life's springtime—and the year's; boy and girl running, like kids that had never known a fear or a mortal burden, over an earth greener than any other, because its time of verdure is brief, dreaming already of the golden-tan of California midsummer, under boughs where tree blooms made all the air sweet.

For sake of the boy and the girl who didn't know enough to take care of their own happiness, I wheeled and galloped in the direction of the country club.

There is an institution known—and respected—in police circles as the Holy Scare. I was determined to make use of it. I'd throw a holy scare into a man I knew, and see what came out.

CHAPTER XX

She had a dozen noisy assistants. I waved at her from the further door as we ducked. Strange that honest, sound little thing should be own sister to the doll-faced vamp out there in the showcase.

Edwards made for a little writing room at the end of a corridor. I followed his long, nervous stride. If the man had been goaded to the shooting of Thomas Gilbert, it would have been an act of passion, and by passion he would betray himself. When I had him alone, the door shut, I went to it, told him we knew the death was murder, not suicide, and that the crime had been committed early Saturday night. Before I could connect him with it, he broke in on me,

"Is Worth suspected?"

"Not by me," I said. "And by God, not by you, Edwards! You know better than that."

I held his eye, but read nothing beyond what might have been the flare of quick anger for the boy's sake.

"Who then?" he said. "Who's dared to lisp a word like that? That hound Cummings—chasing around Santa Ysobel with Bowman—is that where it comes from? I told Worth the fellow was knifing him in the back." He began to stride up and down the room. "The boy's got other friends—that'll go their length for him. I'm with him till hell freezes over. You can count on me—"

"Exactly what I wanted to find out," I cut in, so significantly that he whirled at the end of his beat and stared.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you are the one man who could clear Worth Gilbert of all suspicion."

"What do you know?"

The big voice had come down to a mere whisper. Plenty of passion now—a passion of terror. I spoke quickly.

"We know you were in the study that night, with a companion," and I piled out the worst of his affair, as I'd read it in the diaries, winding up,

"Plain what brought you there. Quarrel? Motive? Don't need to look any further."

Before I was done Jim Edwards had groped over to a chair and slumped into it. A queer, toneless voice asked,

"Worth sent you to me—a detective—with this?"

"No," I said. "I'm acting on my own."

"And against his will," it came back instantly.

"What of it?" I demanded. "Are you the coward to take advantage of his sense of honor?—to let his generosity cost him his life?"

"His life." That landed. Watching, I saw the struggle that tore him. He jumped up and started toward me; I hadn't much doubt that I was now going to hear a plea for mercy—a confession, of sorts—as he stopped, dropped his head, and stood scowling at the floor.

"Talk," I said. "Spill it. Now's your time."

He raised his eyes to mine and spoke suddenly.

"Boyne—I have nothing to say."

"And Worth Gilbert can hang and be damned to him—is that it?" I took another step toward him. "No, Edwards, that 'nothing to say' stuff won't go in a court of law. It won't get you anywhere."

"They'll never in the world—try Worth for—that killing."

"I'm expecting his arrest any hour."

"A trial! Those cursed diaries of Tom's brought into court—My God! I believe if I'd known he'd written things like that, I could have killed him for it!"

I stared. He had forgotten me. But at this speech I mentally dropped him for the moment, and fastened my suspicions on the woman who went with him to the study.

"All right," I said brutally. "You didn't kill Thomas Gilbert. But you took Mrs. Bowman to the study that night to have it out with him, and get six pages from the 1916 book. She got 'em—and you know what she had to do to get 'em."

"Hold on, Boyne!" he said sternly. "Don't you talk like that to me."

"Well," I said, "Mrs. Bowman was there—after those diary leaves. I heard Barbara Wallace imitate her voice—and Chung recognized the imitation. You know—that night at the study—the first night."

He took a bewildered moment or two for thought, then broke out,

"It wasn't Laura's voice Barbara imitated. Did she say so?"

"No, but she imitated the voice of a woman who came weeping to get those pages from the diary; and who else would that be? Who else would want them?"

"You're off the track, Boyne," he drew a great, shuddering sigh of relief. "Tom was always playing the tyrant to those about him; no doubt some woman did come crying for that stuff—but it wasn't Laura."

"By Heaven!" I exclaimed as I looked at him. "You know who it was! You recognized the voice that night—but the woman isn't one you're interested in."

"I'm interested in all women, so far as their getting a decent show in the world is concerned," he maintained sturdily. "I'd go as far as any man to defend the good name of a woman—whether I thought much of her or not."

"This other woman," I argued, not any too keen on such a job myself, "hasn't she got some man to speak for her?"

Edwards looked at me innocently.

"She didn't have, then—" he began, and I finished for him,

"But she has now. I've got it!" As I jumped up and hurried to the door, his eyes followed me in wonder. There I turned with, "Stay right where you are. I'll be back in a minute," ducked out into the hall and signaled a passing messenger, then stepped quickly back into the writing room and said, "I've sent for Bronson Vandeman."

He settled deeper in his chair with,

"I'll stay and see it out. If you get anything from Vandeman, I miss my guess."