d down in the pockets of
his coat, let me have it savagely.

"Evidence, Boyne, is the only thing that would give you a license to
rout men out at this time of night--new evidence. Have you got it? If
not--"

"Wait." I preferred to stop him before he told me to get out. "Wait." I
looked at my watch. In the silence we could hear the words of a yawp
from one of the noisy rooms when a passerby was hailed:

"There she goes! There--look at the chickens!"

A minute later, a tap sounded on the door. Cummings stood by while I
opened it to Barbara, and a slender, veiled woman, taller by half a head
in spite of bent shoulders and the droop of weakness which made the
girl's supporting arm apparently necessary.

At sight of them, Dykeman had come to his feet, biting off an
exclamation, looking vainly around the bare room for chairs, then
suggesting,

"Get some from my room, Boyne."

I went through the connecting door to fetch a couple. When I came back,
Barbara was still standing, but her companion had sunk into the seat the
shivering, uncomfortable old man offered, and Cummings was bringing a
glass of water for her. She sipped it, still under the shield of her
veil. This was never Ina Vandeman. Could it be that Barbara had dragged
Mrs. Thornhill from her bed? I saw Barbara bend and whisper
reassuringly. Then the veil was swept back, it caught and carried the
hat with it from Laura Bowman's shining, copper colored hair, and the
doctor's wife sat there ghastly pale, evidently very weak, but more
composed than I had ever seen her.

"I'm all right now," she spoke very low.

"Miss Wallace," Dykeman demanded harshly. "Who is this--lady?"

"Mrs. Bowman," Barbara looked her employer very straight in the eye.

"Heh?" he barked. "Any relation to Dr. Bowman--any connection with him?"

"His wife." Cummings bent and mumbled to the older man for a moment.

"Laura," Barbara said gently, "this is Mr. Dykeman. You're to tell him
and Mr. Cummings."

"Yes," breathed Mrs. Bowman. "I'll tell them. I'm ready to tell anybody.
There's nothing in dodging, and hiding, and being afraid. I'm done with
it. Now--what is it you want to know?"

Cummings' expression said plainer than words that they didn't want to
know anything. They had their case fixed up and their man arrested, and
they didn't wish to be disturbed. She went on quickly, of herself,

"I believe I was the last person who saw Mr. Gilbert alive. I must have
been. I'd rushed over