, at
any time, be arrested."

Apparently she did not comprehend for a moment. Then, as if the meaning
of my words had just dawned on her, she looked up and gasped:

"You mean--Mr. Sullivan committed the crime himself?"

"I think he did."

"What was it?"

"It was murder," I said deliberately.

Her hands clenched involuntarily, and she shrank back. "A woman?" She
could scarcely form her words.

"No, a man; a Mr. Simon Harrington, of Pittsburg."

Her effort to retain her self-control was pitiful. Then she broke down
and cried, her head on the back of a tall chair.

"It was my fault," she said wretchedly, "my fault, I should not have
sent them the word."

After a few minutes she grew quiet. She seemed to hesitate over
something, and finally determined to say it.

"You will understand better, sir, when I say that I was raised in the
Harrington family. Mr. Harrington was Mr. Sullivan's wife's father!"

CHAPTER XXV. AT THE STATION

So it had been the tiger, not the lady! Well, I had held to that theory
all through. Jennie suddenly became a valuable person; if necessary she
could prove the connection between Sullivan and the murdered man, and
show a motive for the crime. I was triumphant when Hotchkiss came in.
When the girl had produced a photograph of Mrs. Sullivan, and I had
recognized the bronze-haired girl of the train, we were both well
satisfied--which goes to prove the ephemeral nature of most human
contentments.

Jennie either had nothing more to say, or feared she had said too much.
She was evidently uneasy before Hotchkiss. I told her that Mrs. Sullivan
was recovering in a Baltimore hospital, but she already knew it, from
some source, and merely nodded. She made a few preparations for leaving,
while Hotchkiss and I compared notes, and then, with the cat in her
arms, she climbed into the trap from the town. I sat with her, and on
the way down she told me a little, not much.

"If you see Mrs. Sullivan," she advised, "and she is conscious, she
probably thinks that both her husband and her father were killed in the
wreck. She will be in a bad way, sir."

"You mean that she--still cares about her husband?"

The cat crawled over on to my knee, and rubbed its bead against my hand
invitingly. Jennie stared at the undulating line of the mountain crests,
a colossal sun against a blue ocean of sky. "Yes, she cares," she said
softly. "Women are made like that. They say they are cats, but Peter
there