as
not especially pleasant about it. They were her roses, and anyhow, they
were meant for me. Richey left very soon, with an irritating final grin
at the box.

"Good-by, sir woman-hater," he jeered at me from the door.

So he wore one of the roses she had sent me, to luncheon with her, and
I lay back among my pillows and tried to remember that it was his game,
anyhow, and that I wasn't even drawing cards. To remember that, and to
forget the broken necklace under my head!

CHAPTER XIII. FADED ROSES

I was in the house for a week. Much of that time I spent in composing
and destroying letters of thanks to Miss West, and in growling at the
doctor. McKnight dropped in daily, but he was less cheerful than usual.
Now and then I caught him eying me as if he had something to say, but
whatever it was he kept it to himself. Once during the week he went to
Baltimore and saw the woman in the hospital there. From the description
I had little difficulty in recognizing the young woman who had been with
the murdered man in Pittsburg. But she was still unconscious. An elderly
aunt had appeared, a gaunt person in black, who sat around like a
buzzard on a fence, according to McKnight, and wept, in a mixed figure,
into a damp handkerchief.

On the last day of my imprisonment he stopped in to thrash out a case
that was coming up in court the next day, and to play a game of double
solitaire with me.

"Who won the ball game?" I asked.

"We were licked. Ask me something pleasant. Oh, by the way, Bronson's
out to-day."

"I'm glad I'm not on his bond," I said pessimistically. "He'll clear
out."

"Not he." McKnight pounced on my ace. "He's no fool. Don't you suppose
he knows you took those notes to Pittsburg? The papers were full of it.
And he knows you escaped with your life and a broken arm from the wreck.
What do we do next? The Commonwealth continues the case. A deaf man on a
dark night would know those notes are missing."

"Don't play so fast," I remonstrated. "I have only one arm to your two.
Who is trailing Bronson? Did you try to get Johnson?"

"I asked for him, but he had some work on hand."

"The murder's evidently a dead issue," I reflected. "No, I'm not joking.
The wreck destroyed all the evidence. But I'm firmly convinced those
notes will be offered, either to us or to Bronson very soon. Johnson's
a blackguard, but he's a good detective. He could make his fortune as a
game dog. What's he doing?"

McKnight put dow