to be human beings and accept my wife at her face value, I
have a surprise for you. On the day when Nan married the father of my
adopted son, he waited until the officiating minister had signed the
marriage license and attested that he had performed the ceremony; then
while the minister's attention was on something else, he took
possession of the license and put it in his overcoat pocket. Later he
and Nan drove to a restaurant for luncheon and the overcoat with the
license in the pocket was stolen, from the automobile. The thief
pawned the coat later and the pawnbroker discovered the license in the
pocket after the thief had departed. The following day the fellow was
arrested in the act of stealing another overcoat; the pawnbroker read
of the arrest and remembered he had loaned five dollars on an overcoat
to a man who gave the same name this thief gave to the police. So the
pawnbroker--"

"I am not interested, my son. I require no proofs."

"Thank you for that, father. But you're entitled to them and you're
going to get them. The pawnbroker found on the inside lining of the
inner breast pocket of the overcoat the tag which all tailors sew
there when, they make the garment. This tag bore the name of the owner
of the overcoat, his address and the date of delivery of the
overcoat."

"Now, the pawnbroker noticed that the man who owned the overcoat was
not the person named in the marriage license. Also he noticed that the
marriage license was attested by a minister but that it had not been
recorded by the state board of health, as required by law--and the
pawnbroker was aware that marriage licenses are not permitted, by law,
to come into the possession of the contracting parties until the fact
that they have been legally married has been duly recorded on the
evidence of the marriage--which is, of course, the marriage license."

"Why didn't the idiot send the license back to the minister who had
performed the ceremony?" The Laird demanded. "Then this tangle would
never have occurred."

"He says he thought of that, but he was suspicious. It was barely
possible that the officiating clergyman had connived at the theft of
the license from his desk, so the pawnbroker, who doubtless possesses
the instincts of an amateur detective, resolved to get the license
into the hands of Nan Brent direct. Before doing so, however, he wrote
to the man named in the license and sent his letter to the address
therein given. In the course of