m; indeed, to save his hide he has to be.

Nearly every great fact is like a well-balanced kite; it has for its
tail a whimsy. Haggerty, on a certain day, received twenty-five
hundred dollars from the Hindu prince and five hundred more from the
hotel management. The detective bore up under the strain with stoic
complacency. "The Blind Madonna of the Pagan--Chance" always had her
hand upon his shoulder.

Kitty went to Bar Harbor, her mother to visit friends in Orange.
Thomas walked with a straight spine always; but it stiffened to think
that, without knowing a solitary item about his past, they trusted him
with the run of the house. The first day there was work to do; the
second day, a little less; the third, nothing at all. So he moped
about the great house, lonesome as a forgotten dog. He wrote a sonnet
on being lonesome, tore it up and flung the scraps into the
waste-basket. Once, he seated himself at the piano and picked out with
clumsy forefinger _Walking Down the Old Kent Road_. Kitty could play.
Often in the mornings, while at his desk, he had heard her; and oddly
enough, he seemed to sense her moods by what she played. (That's the
poet.) When she played Chopin or Chaminade she went about gaily all
the day; when she played Beethoven, Grieg or Bach, Thomas felt the
presence of shadows.

There was a magnificent library, mostly editions de luxe. Thomas
smiled over the many uncut volumes. True, Dickens, Dumas and Stevenson
were tolerably well-thumbed; but the host of thinkers and poets and
dramatists and theologians, in their hand-tooled Levant . . . ! Away
in an obscure corner (because of its cheap binding) he came across a
set of Lamb. He took out a volume at random and glanced at the
fly-leaf--"Kitty Killigrew, Smith College." Then he went into the body
of the book. It was copiously marked and annotated. There was
something so intimate in the touch of the book that he felt he was
committing a sacrilege, looking as it were into Kitty's soul. Most men
would have gone through the set. Thomas put the book away. Thou fool,
indeed! What a hash he had made of his affairs!

He saw Killigrew at breakfast only. The merchant preferred his club in
the absence of his family.

Early in the afternoon of the fourth day, Thomas received a telephone
call from Killigrew.

"Hello! That you, Webb?"

"Yes. Who is it?"

"Killigrew. Got anything to do to-night?"

"No, Mr. Killigrew."

"You know where