ailroad station. He bought a ticket
and boarded a local train, and I followed him. He got off at Stanwick
and went at once to the house on Duncan Street.

"I walked into the side yard, for it was pretty dark there at first; but
then the moon came out from behind some buildings and flooded all over
the place, and I had to stick close to the side of the house where the
shadows were."

"Didn't you go to the other side at all?" asked Ashton Kirk.

"Yes; a couple of times, but I couldn't stay long, for I was afraid some
one would see me. Once I looked in at a window that was lighted up, and
there was the Bounder talking to some one, and he was laughing and
showing her diamonds."

"Is that all you saw?"

Fenton shook his head.

"No," said he, "it wasn't. I saw a woman a little while later; she was
snooping around in the dark, and then she hid behind a kind of a thing
that they grow vines over and watched the window."

"What else did you see?" There was a silence after this question; as
Fenton squirmed and shifted his eyes like a trapped tiger, Ashton-Kirk
went on: "Remember, there has been a direct charge against you--that you
killed the man you followed from this place."

"That's a lie," said Fenton. "It's a lie! I didn't! It was that woman
killed him. And I saw her do it!"

CHAPTER XXIV

MR. QUIGLEY IS INTERVIEWED

For a moment there was a halt; Ashton-Kirk, Hutchinson and Scanlon
looked at the broken-nosed man without speaking, and the heart of the
big athlete turned sick at what he had heard.

"You saw her strike the blow?" asked the investigator.

"Yes--with a big brass thing. I thought it was a poker; but the papers
said afterward it was a candlestick, and I guess it was."

"What did you do after seeing this?"

"It got into my head that Duncan Street was no healthy place for me, and
I'd have jumped out of sight, only for seeing the woman take the
diamonds."

"She took them, then?"

"It was the first thing she did. I hung to the outside door waiting for
her. But she fooled me. She must have gone out some other way, for I
heard the gate click, and saw something in the shadow of the trees on
the sidewalk. I hurried out there, but she was gone; I didn't get
another peep at her."

Ashton-Kirk smiled.

"That is," said he, quietly, "not until to-day, at Quigley's."

Fenton's lower jaw dropped, and he stared at the investigator vacantly.

"At Quigley's!" said he.

"You saw her come down the