after me;
then she turned back into the house. And I went on down the avenue
with a chill at my heart.

CHAPTER XVIII

BUILDING A THEORY

I was surprised, when I came down for dinner an hour later, to find
Godfrey awaiting me.

"I always try to make it, Saturday night," he explained. "The chief
throws the work on the other fellows, if he can. That's the reason I
hustled away after the inquest. The story's all in, and now we'll have
a good dinner--if I do say it myself--and then a good talk. I feel the
need of a talk, Lester."

"So do I," I said; "though I'm afraid talking won't help us much."

"The funny thing about this case is," mused Godfrey, "that the farther
we get into it the thicker it grows."

"Yes," I agreed, "and the more one thinks about it, the less one
understands."

"Well, suppose we get away from it for a while," said Godfrey, and
turned the talk to other things. No man could talk more delightfully
of music, of art, of letters. How he managed it I could never guess,
but he seemed to have read everything, to have seen everything, to
have heard everything. Marryat, for instance; who reads Marryat
nowadays? And yet he had read the "Phantom Ship," and so knew
something of Goa. An hour passed very quickly, but at last he rose and
led the way into his study.

"A friend of mine dropped in to see me to-day at the office," he
remarked, "a Cuban planter who comes up to New York occasionally, and
whom I happened to help out of a rather serious difficulty a few years
ago. Perhaps some day I'll tell you about it. He always brings me a
bundle of his own special cigars. I didn't see him to-day, but he left
the cigars, and I want you to try one. Perhaps it will give you an
inspiration."

He went to his desk, opened a tin-foiled package that lay there, and
carefully extracted two long cigars of a rich and glowing brown.

"Perhaps you've heard of the special cigars that are made for Pierpont
Morgan," he went on, as he handed one to me, after carefully replacing
the wrappings of the bundle. "Well, I smoked one of Morgan's cigars
once--it was good, mighty good; but it wasn't in the same class with
these. Light up."

I did. Never before had I drawn between my lips a breath so
satisfying--so rich, so smooth, so full of flavour. I exhaled the
fragrant smoke slowly.

"Godfrey," I said, "I never knew what tobacco was before. Are these
cigars purchasable? I'm only a poor lawyer, but even one a month wou