he others are not here
yet."

Three hours later I went up to bed. I had not seen Alison alone again.
The noise was at its height below, and I glanced down into the garden,
still bright in the moonlight. Leaning against a tree, and staring
interestedly into the billiard room, was Johnson.

CHAPTER XXIX. IN THE DINING-ROOM

That was Saturday night, two weeks after the wreck. The previous five
days had been full of swift-following events--the woman in the house
next door, the picture in the theater of a man about to leap from the
doomed train, the dinner at the Dallases', and Richey's discovery that
Alison was the girl in the case. In quick succession had come our visit
to the Carter place, the finding of the rest of the telegram, my seeing
Alison there, and the strange interview with Mrs. Conway. The Cresson
trip stood out in my memory for its serio-comic horrors and its one real
thrill. Then--the discovery by the police of the seal-skin bag and the
bit of chain; Hotchkiss producing triumphantly Stuart for Sullivan and
his subsequent discomfiture; McKnight at the station with Alison, and
later the confession that he was out of the running.

And yet, when I thought it all over, the entire week and its events were
two sides of a triangle that was narrowing rapidly to an apex, a point.
And the said apex was at that moment in the drive below my window,
resting his long legs by sitting on a carriage block, and smoking a pipe
that made the night hideous. The sense of the ridiculous is very close
to the sense of tragedy. I opened my screen and whistled, and Johnson
looked up and grinned. We said nothing. I held up a handful of cigars,
he extended his hat, and when I finally went to sleep, it was to a
soothing breeze that wafted in salt air and a faint aroma of good
tobacco. I was thoroughly tired, but I slept restlessly, dreaming of
two detectives with Pittsburg warrants being held up by Hotchkiss at the
point of a splint, while Alison fastened their hands with a chain that
was broken and much too short. I was roused about dawn by a light rap at
the door, and, opening it, I found Forbes, in a pair of trousers and a
pajama coat. He was as pleasant as most fleshy people are when they have
to get up at night, and he said the telephone had been ringing for an
hour, and he didn't know why somebody else in the blankety-blank house
couldn't have heard it. He wouldn't get to sleep until noon.

As he was palpably asleep on his