tion the detective
confessed himself baffled.

"If you ask me," he commented at the conclusion of his report, "the
answer is: she means to be let alone until she's quite ready to see you
again. I don't pin any medals on myself for this demonstration of
extraordinary penetration; I merely point out the obvious for your own
good. Contain yourself, my dear man--and stop gnawing your knuckles like
the heavy man in a Third Avenue melodrama. It won't do any good; your
wife promised to communicate with you as soon as her health was
restored. And not only is she a woman who keeps her promise, but it is
quite comprehensible that she should have been shaken up by her
extraordinary experience to an extent we can hardly appreciate who
haven't the highly sensitive organization of a woman to contend with.
Give her time."

"I don't believe it!" Whitaker raged. "She--she loved me there on the
island. She couldn't change so quickly, bring herself to treat me so
cruelly, unless some infernal influence had been brought to bear upon
her."

"It's possible, but I--"

"Oh, I don't mean that foolishness about her love being a man's
death-warrant. That may have something to do with it, but--but, damn
it!--I conquered that once. She promised ... was in my arms ... I'd won
her.... She loved me; there wasn't any make-believe about it. If there
were any foundation for that poppycock, I'd be a dead man now--instead
of a man damnably ill-used!... No: somebody has got hold of her, worked
on her sympathies, maligned me...."

"Do you object to telling me whom you have in mind?"

"The man you suspect as well as I--the one man to whom her allegiance
means everything: the man you named to me the night we met for the first
time, as the one who'd profit the most by keeping her from leaving the
stage!"

"Well, if it's Max, you'll know in time. It won't profit him to hide the
light of his star under a bushel; he can only make money by displaying
it."

"I'll know before long. As soon as he gets back in town--"

"So you've been after him?"

"Why not? But he's out on the Pacific coast; or so they tell me at the
theatre."

"And expected back--when?"

"Soon."

"Do you know when he left?"

"About the middle of July--they say in his office."

"Then that lets him out."

"But it's a lie."

"Well--?"

"I've just remembered: Max was at the Fiske place, urging her to return,
the night before you caught Drummond at the bungalow. I saw them,
walk