tupid as she looked, but sullen, morose--"smouldering" about expresses
it.

I closed the doors into the dining-room and, leaving one light in the
hall, went up to bed. A guest room in the third story had been assigned
me, and I was tired enough to have slept on the floor. The telephone
bell rang just after I got into bed, and grumbling at my luck, I went
down to the lower floor.

It was the _Times-Post_, and the man at the telephone was in a hurry.

"This is the _Times-Post_. Is Mr. Wardrop there?"

"No."

"Who is this?"

"This is John Knox."

"The attorney?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Knox, are you willing to put yourself on record that Mr. Fleming
committed suicide?"

"I am not going to put myself on record at all."

"To-night's _Star_ says you call it suicide, and that you found him with
the revolver in his hand."

"The _Star_ lies!" I retorted, and the man at the other end chuckled.

"Many thanks," he said, and rang off.

I went back to bed, irritated that I had betrayed myself. Loss of sleep
for two nights, however, had told on me: in a short time I was sound
asleep.

I wakened with difficulty. My head felt stupid and heavy, and I was
burning with thirst. I sat up and wondered vaguely if I were going to be
ill, and I remember that I felt too weary to get a drink. As I roused,
however, I found that part of my discomfort came from bad ventilation,
and I opened a window and looked out.

The window was a side one, opening on to a space perhaps eight feet
wide, which separated it from its neighbor. Across from me was only a
blank red wall, but the night air greeted me refreshingly. The wind was
blowing hard, and a shutter was banging somewhere below. I leaned out
and looked down into the well-like space beneath me. It was one of those
apparently chance movements that have vital consequences, and that have
always made me believe in the old Calvinistic creed of foreordination.

Below me, on the wall across, was a rectangle of yellow light, reflected
from the library window of the Fleming home. There was some one in the
house.

As I still stared, the light was slowly blotted out--not as if the light
had been switched off, but by a gradual decreasing in size of the
lighted area. The library shade had been drawn.

My first thought was burglars; my second--Lightfoot. No matter who it
was, there was no one who had business there. Luckily, I had brought my
revolver with me from Fred's that day, and it was under my