nge 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

ON THE HILL-TOP

Morning dawned on the good ship Jerry Boyne not so dismasted and
rudderless as you might have thought. I'd carried that 1920 diary to my
room and, before I slept, read the whole of it. This was the last word
we had from the dead man; here if anywhere would be found support for
the suggestions of a weakening mind and suicide.

Nothing of that sort here; on the contrary, Thomas Gilbert was very much
his clear-headed, unpleasant, tyrannical self to the last stroke of the
pen. But I came on something to build up a case against Eddie Hughes,
the chauffeur.

I didn't get much sleep. As soon as I heard Chung moving around, I went
down, had him give me a cup of coffee, then stationed him on the back
porch, and walked to the study, shut myself in, and discharged my heavy
police revolver into a corner of the fireplace; then with the front door
open, fired again.

"How many shots?" I called to Chung.

"One time shoot."

Worth's head poked from his upstairs window as he shouted,

"What's the excitement down there?"

"Trying my gun. How many times did I fire?"

"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 o