and that accounts for
anything and everything. I'd forgotten that for a few minutes, you
know."

"Well?" she said, with the faintest possible accent of impatience.

"He has gone off somewhere to plug away on that book of his; I'm sure of
it. And he hasn't gone very far. I'm inclined to believe that Mrs.
Holcomb knows where he is--only she won't tell. And somebody else knows,
too."

"Who is the somebody else?"

Though the wire was in a measure public, Raymer risked a single word.

"Charlotte."

None of the sudden passion that leaped into Margery Grierson's eyes was
suffered to find its way into her voice when she said: "What makes you
think that?"

"Oh, a lot of little things. I was over at the house last night, and
there is some sort of a tea-pot tempest going on; I couldn't make out
just what. But from the way things shaped up, I gathered that our friend
was wanted in Lake Boulevard, and wanted bad--for some reason or other.
I had to promise that I'd try to dig him up, before I got away."

"Well?" went the questioning word over the wires, and this time the
impatient accent was unconcealed.

"I promised; but this morning Doctor Bertie called me up to say that it
was all right; that I needn't trouble myself."

"And I needn't have troubled you," said the voice at the Mereside
transmitter. "Excuse _me_, as Hank Billingsly used to say when he
happened to shoot the wrong man. Come over when you feel like it--and
have time. You mustn't forget that you owe me two calls. Good-by."

After Margery Grierson had let herself out of the stifling little closet
under the hall stair, she went into the darkened library and sat for a
long time staring at the cold hearth. It was a crooked world, and just
now it was a sharply cruel one. There was much to be read between the
lines of the short telephone talk with Edward Raymer. The trap was
sprung and its jaws were closing; and in his extremity Kenneth Griswold
was turning, not to the woman who had condoned and shielded and paid the
costly price, but to the other.

"Dear God!" she said softly, when the prolonged stare had brought the
quick-springing tears to her eyes; "and I--_I_ could have kept him
safe!"

XXXVIII

THE PENDULUM-SWING

To a man seeking only to escape from himself, all roads are equal and
all destinations likely to prove uniformly disappointing. Turning his
back upon the Iron Works in the day of defeat, with no very clear idea
of what he should do