h Barbara's face was white, her eyes big and
black, she answered me bravely,

"Mr. Gilbert did not kill himself. Worth doesn't think so, either."

"What!" It was jolted out of me. After a moment's thought, I finished,
"Then I've got to know who the woman was that visited this room last
night."

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 bac