ll
like a crazy man, and then Hunter came along and said to go back; Doctor
Gray was at the club.

"That is all I know. I'm not proud of it, Margery, but it might have
been worse, and it's the truth. It clears up something, but not all. It
doesn't tell where Aunt Jane is, or who has the hundred thousand. But it
does show who killed your father. And if you know what is good for you,
Knox, you will let it go at that. You can't fight the police and the
courts single-handed. Look how the whole thing was dropped, and the
most cold-blooded kind of murder turned into suicide. Suicide without a
weapon! Bah!"

"I am not so sure about Schwartz," I said thoughtfully. "We haven't yet
learned about eleven twenty-two C."

CHAPTER XXV

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

Miss Jane Maitland had been missing for ten days. In that time not one
word had come from her. The reporter from the _Eagle_ had located her in
a dozen places, and was growing thin and haggard following little old
ladies along the street--and being sent about his business tartly when
he tried to make inquiries.

Some things puzzled me more than ever in the light of Wardrop's story.
For the third time I asked myself why Miss Letitia denied the loss of
the pearls. There was nothing in what we had learned, either, to tell
why Miss Jane had gone away--to ascribe a motive.

How she had gone, in view of Wardrop's story of the cab, was clear. She
had gone by street-car, walking the three miles to Wynton alone at two
o'clock in the morning, although she had never stirred around the house
at night without a candle, and was privately known to sleep with a
light when Miss Letitia went to bed first, and could not see it through
the transom.

The theory I had formed seemed absurd at first, but as I thought it
over, its probabilities grew on me. I took dinner at Bellwood and
started for town almost immediately after.

Margery had gone to Miss Letitia's room, and Wardrop was pacing up and
down the veranda, smoking. He looked dejected and anxious, and he
welcomed my suggestion that he walk down to the station with me. As we
went, a man emerged from the trees across and came slowly after us.

"You see, I am only nominally a free agent," he said morosely. "They'll
poison me yet; I know too much."

We said little on the way to the train. Just before it came thundering
along, however, he spoke again.

"I am going away, Knox. There isn't anything in this political game for
me, a