stepped inside.

"Have my chair," suggested Clymer hospitably as the pretty widow raised
her lorgnette and scanned the Oriental hangings and lamps, and lastly,
the white envelope which lay on the table, red seal uppermost, where
Ferguson had placed it on her entrance.

"Are your daughters here, Colonel McIntyre?" asked Kent as he took a
step toward the table. McIntyre's answer was drowned in an outburst of
cheering in the dining room and the rush of many feet. On common impulse
Kent and the others turned toward the doorway and looked inside the
dining room. Two officers of the French High Commission were being held
on the shoulders of comrades and were delivering, as best they could
amidst cheers and applause, their farewell to hospitable Washington.

As his companions brushed by him to join the gay throng in the center of
the room, Kent turned back to pick up the envelope he had left lying on
the table. It was gone.

In feverish haste Kent looked under the table, under the chairs, the
lounge and its cushions, behind the draperies, and even under the rugs
which covered the floor of the porch, and then rose and stared into the
dining room. Which one of his companions had taken the envelope?

Outside the porch the beautiful trumpet vine, its sturdy trunk and thick
branches reaching almost to the roof of the club building, rustled as
in a high wind, and the branches swayed this way and that as a figure
climbed swiftly down from the porch until, reaching the fence separating
the club property from its neighbor's, the man swung across it, no mean
athletic feet, and taking advantage of each sheltering shadow, darted
into the alley and from there down silent, deserted Nineteenth Street.

CHAPTER XI. HALF A TRUTH

Dancing was being resumed in the dining room as Kent appeared again
in the doorway and he made his way as quickly as possible among the
couples, going into all the rooms on that floor, but nowhere could
he find Detective Ferguson. On emerging from the drawing room, he
encountered the steward returning from downstairs.

"Have you seen Mr. Clymer?" he asked hurriedly.

"Yes, Mr. Kent; he just left the club, taking Detective Ferguson
with him in his motor. Is there anything I can do?" added the steward
observing Kent's agitation.

"No, no, thanks. Say, where is Colonel McIntyre?" Kent gave up further
pursuit of the detective, he could find him later at Headquarters. The
steward looked among the dancers. "