hese two women had shifted. Laura Bowman wasn't red-headed for nothing;
out from under the blight of Bowman and that hateful marriage, she had
already thrown off some of her physical frailness; the nervous tension
showed itself now in energy. She was moving swiftly about putting to
rights after my meal while she listened. But Barbara sat looking
straight ahead of her; I knew she was seeing streets full of carnival,
every friend and acquaintance out at a ball--and Worth in a murderer's
cell. It wouldn't do. I jumped to my feet with a brisk,

"Girl, where's your hat? We'll go to the study and look over all our
points once more. Get busy--get busy. That's the medicine for you."

She gave me a miserable look and a negative shake of the head; but I
still urged, "Worth sent me to you. The last thing he said was, 'Take it
to Bobs.'"

Dumbly she submitted. Mrs. Bowman came running with the girl's hat, and,
"What about me, Mr. Boyne? Isn't there something I can do?"

"I wish you'd go to the country club--to the ball--the same as all the
others. Got a costume here, haven't you?"

"Yes, I can wear Barbara's," she glanced to where a pile of soft black
stuff, a red scarf, a scarlet poppy wreath, lay on a chair, "She was to
have gone as 'The Lady of Dreams.'"

Barbara went with me out into the flare of carnival illumination that
paled the afterglow of a gorgeous sunset. No cars allowed on these
down-town streets; even walking, we found it best to take the long way
round. To our left the town roared and racketed as though it was afire.
Nothing said between us till I grumbled out,

"I wish I knew where Cummings was keeping Eddie Hughes."

Barbara's voice beside me answered unexpectedly,

"Here. In Santa Ysobel. Eddie was at Capehart's fifteen minutes before
you got there; he came for Bill. A gasoline engine at the city hall had
broken down."

I pulled up short for a moment, and looked back at the town.

"Where'd he go?"

"With Bill, to the city hall. Eddie's one of the queen's guards. They're
all to be at the country club at ten o'clock to review the grand march
that opens the ball."

I mustn't let her dwell on that. I hurried on once more, and neither of
us spoke again till I unlocked the study door, snapped on the lights,
brought out and put on the table the 1920 diary and the little blue
blotter--the last bits of evidence that I felt hadn't been thoroughly
analysed. Barbara just dropped into a chair and looked from th