force of
calamity, she had been wounded when she sank down back there in the
crowd. It was a shot--not a giant cracker--we had heard.

"Vandeman," I whirled on him, "You shot this girl. You tried to kill
her."

Sensation enough among the others; but I doubt if he even heard me. His
gaze had found Barbara; all the bounce, all the jauntiness was out of
the man, as he stared with the same haunted fear his eyes had held when
she concentrated last night at his own dinner table.

She was concentrating now; could she stand the strain of it, with its
weakening of the heart action, its pumping all the blood to the brain? I
shouldered my way to her, and knelt beside her, begging,

"Don't, Barbara. Give it up, girl. You can't stand this."

Her hands unclasped. Her eyes grew normal. She relaxed, sighingly. I
leaned closer while she whispered to me the last addition in that
problem of two and two--the full solution. Armed, I faced Vandeman once
more.

Something seemed to be giving way in the man; his lips were almost as
pale as his face, and that had been, from the moment he uncovered it,
like tallow. He looked withered, smaller; his hair where it had been
pressed down by mask and cap, crossed his forehead, flat, smooth, dull
brown. I saw, half consciously, that Fong Ling was gone. An accomplice?
No matter; the criminal himself was here--Barbara's wonder man. It was
to him I spoke.

"Edward Clayte," at the name, Cummings clanked around front to stare. "I
hold a warrant for your arrest for the theft of nine hundred and eighty
seven thousand dollars from the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank of San
Francisco."

He made a sick effort to square his shoulders; fumbled with his hair to
toss it back from its straight-down sleekness, as Clayte, to the
pompadoured crest of Vandeman. How often I had seen that gesture, not
understanding its significance. Cummings, at my side, drew in a breath,
with,

"Why--damn it!--he is Clayte!"

"All right," I let the words go from the corner of my mouth at the
lawyer, in the same hushed tones he'd used. "See how you like this next
one," and finished, loud enough so all might hear,

"And I charge you, Edward Clayte--Bronson Vandeman--with the murder of
Thomas Gilbert."

CHAPTER XXIX

UNMASKED

Disgrace was in the air; the country club had seen its vice president in
handcuffs. There was a great gathering up of petticoats and raising of
moral umbrellas to keep clear of the dirty splash