al neatness. "I'd
promised him my influence in the matter some little time ago."

"Yes," I said, "mighty little time ago--the day he promised the
testimony you wanted in the Gilbert case."

"Anything in what Boyne says, Cummings?" Dykeman asked anxiously. "You
know I wouldn't stand for that sort of stuff."

The lawyer shook his head, but I didn't believe it was ended between
them; Dykeman was the devil to hang on to a point. This would come up
again after I was gone. Meantime I made haste to shove the photographs
before them. Cummings passed them back with an indifferent, "What's the
idea?"

"You don't recognize him?"

"Never saw the man in my life," and again he asked, "What's the idea?"

"You'd recognize a picture of Clayte?" I countered with a question of my
own.

"Yes--I think so," rather dubiously. "But Dykeman would. Show them to
him."

Dykeman reached for the photographs, spread them out before him, then
looked up from them peevishly to say,

"For the good Lord's sake! Don't look any more like Clayte than it does
like a horned toad. Is that what you've been wasting your time over,
Boyne? If you ask me--"

"I don't ask you anything," retrieving the pictures, planting them deep
in an inner pocket. Then I got myself out of the room.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of the Fremont House, I felt sort of
bewildered. This last crack had taken all the pep I had left. I suddenly
realized it was long after dinner time, and I'd had no dinner, no lunch,
nothing to eat since an early breakfast. Worth had sent me to the
girl--and I hadn't gone. I dragged myself around to Capehart's cottage
as nearly whipped as I ever was in my life.

I found Barbara with Laura Bowman, every one else off the place, out at
the shows. Those girls sure were good to me; they fed me and didn't ask
questions till I was ready to talk. Nothing to be said really, except
that I'd failed. I told them of meeting the Vandemans, and gave them
Ina Vandeman's opinion as to how Worth's friends should conduct
themselves just now.

"So they'll all be out there," I concluded, "Vandeman and his wife
leading the grand march, her sisters as maids of honor--except Skeet,
staying at home with her mother. Cummings goes as a Roman soldier;
Doctor Bowman as a Spanish cavalier. Edwards didn't see it as the
Vandemans do, but after I'd talked to him awhile, he agreed to be
there."

And suddenly I noticed for the first time how the relative position of
t