to stand out and assume proper
significance.

For instance there was her constant repetition of the fact that Roland
Warren had been a frequent visitor at the Lawrence home. That might mean
nothing: it might mean a great deal. Certainly it was indicative of a
close friendship between the dead man and the members of that household.
He paid little heed to the girl's protestations that Warren had been in
love with her. No expert in the ways of the rising generation, Carroll
yet knew that no man of Warren's maturity had unleashed his affections on
a girl who yet lacked several years of womanhood. The dead man had been
too much of an epicure in femininity for such as that.

But Carroll knew that in that house there was another woman: Naomi
Lawrence--Evelyn's sister. And while Evelyn had dismissed the sister
with a few words, Carroll remembered that the girl had described her as
being "not so bad looking" and had also said that Mrs. Lawrence fancied
that when Warren called at the house, he was calling on her.

There, too, was the matter of Gerald Lawrence to be considered. Evelyn
insisted that Gerald was "an old crab" and also that he was of an
exceedingly jealous disposition. If that were true, then his jealousy,
coupled with a possible intimacy between Mrs. Lawrence and Warren might
have been ample motive for the taxicab tragedy.

It was all rather puzzling. Carroll's mind leaped nimbly from one
mental trail to another. He held himself in check, afraid that his
deductions were proceeding too swiftly. He was acutely conscious of the
danger of jumping too avidly on this single tangible clue which had
come to him after four days of fruitless search. There was danger, and
he knew it, of attaching untoward importance to a combination of
circumstances which under other conditions might not have excited him
in the slightest degree.

It was there that the case bewildered him--and he was not slow in
confessing his bewilderment. Up to this moment there had been an
appalling dearth of physical clues--of things upon which a line of
investigation could be intelligently based. And he knew that now
something had turned up, he must watch himself lest the circumstance
assume unreasonable and unwarranted proportions.

The somber outline of police headquarters bulked in the night. Carroll
swung down the alley, shut off his motor and entered. He found Leverage
in his office and settled at once to a discussion of developments. But
when