son; it's stark madness.
Both of us know Billy wouldn't murder a cat! And there's another thing,
too! I heard all Wilbraham said about that Valenka girl's cousin, and I
wish you'd tell him to go slow on it. I was in too much of a rage, or
I'd have gone in and told him myself. Dick Hutton was a friend of mine;
no matter how much he was in love with a girl who'd got sick of him for
Van Ruyne, he wasn't the kind to sneak round the Houstons' house as a
servant. I won't let any one say that with impunity. It's no use my
telling Wilbraham so in the state he's in to-night, but you might gently
hint it when you've a chance. I wish to heaven he'd give up drink and
drugs and being an amateur detective!" He shrugged his shoulders with a
complete return to his ordinary manner. "I'm sorry I startled you just
now, but I was too cursed angry to say I was here. Oh, there are my
keys!" He stooped, picked them up off the floor, and went out with a
careless good night.

"Was that Macartney?" Dudley inquired as I went back to him. "I thought
he'd gone!"

"Forgot the office key and came back for it." I felt no call to enter on
Macartney's embassy regarding Hutton. "Going to bed?"

Dudley gulped down a horn of whisky that would have settled any two men
in the bunk house, nodded, and shut the door behind him. I put out the
light and sat on in the living room alone, how long I don't know. I had
nothing pleasant to think of, either. It was no use my trying to imagine
that Tatiana Paulina Valenka was not going to marry Dudley, whatever I
had hoped about Paulette Brown. As far as any chance of her loving me
was concerned, I had lost my dream girl forever. She was none of my
business any more, except that--"By gad, she _is_ my business," I
thought in a sudden bitter fury, "as far as Hutton and our gold! If I'm
right, and he's hiding round here, I'll put a stopper on any more
hold-ups. And I'll make good and sure she never goes out to meet him
again, too!"

As I swore it I turned away from the dead fire and the dark room, that
looked as if we'd all deserted it hours ago, and went Indian-silent
into the hallway. And my heart contracted in a hard, tight lump.

The passage was light as day, with the moon full on the window at the
end of it. And wrapped in a shawl, with her back to me, stood my dream
girl, undoing the front door as noiselessly as I had come into the
passage.

I let her do it. The hallway on which Marcia's bedroom door opened, le