and afterward branched apart, the larger set
trailing off toward the stairs, and the smaller moving back into the
pantry.

The detective stroked his chin for an interval.

"U--m!" observed he thoughtfully.

CHAPTER XIII

A NEWCOMER ENTERS

The next day Mr. Howard Snelling made his appearance at the Spence
workshop.

Bob was fitting wire netting to some metal uprights and struggling to
focus his mind on what he was doing enough to forget that Delight
Hathaway was on the other side of the partition when from the window
above the bench he saw Cynthia Galbraith come rolling up to the gate in
her runabout, accompanied by a strikingly handsome stranger.

He hurried out to meet them.

Her father and Roger, the girl said, had gone to a yacht race at
Hyannis, so she had brought Mr. Snelling over. She introduced the two
men but refused somewhat curtly to come in, explaining that she would
be back, or some one else would, to fetch the guest home to Belleport
for luncheon. Then, without a backward glance, she started the engine
and disappeared around the curve of the Harbor Road.

Perhaps it was just as well, Robert Morton reflected, that she had not
accepted his invitation to come in, for to bring her and Delight
together at this delicate juncture might result in awkwardness;
nevertheless, it certainly was something unprecedented for Cynthia to
be so brusque and be in such a hurry. The enigma puzzled him, and he
found it recurring to his mind persistently. However, he resolutely
shook it off and turned his attention instead to his new acquaintance.

He was, he could not but admit, quite unprepared to find Mr. Howard
Snelling, his future chief, possessed of so attractive a personality.
Mr. Galbraith, when alluding to the expert craftsman, had never
mentioned his age, and Bob had gleaned the impression that the man
before whose ability the entire Galbraith shipbuilding plant bowed down
was middle-aged, possibly even elderly. Therefore to be confronted by
some one in the early forties was a distinct shock.

Snelling's hair was, to be sure, sprinkled lightly with gray, but this
hint of maturity was given the lie by his ruddy, unlined countenance
and the youthfulness with which he wore his clothes. A good tailor had
evidently found a model worthy of his skill and had tried to live up to
the task set him, for everything in the stranger's attitude and
appearance proclaimed smartness and the _savoir faire_ of the