art of it; I'm not sure about the other,"
said Braceway.

"What are you after, though?" Bristow pressed him.

"Facts. That bearded man with the gold tooth, the fellow who always
started from nowhere and invariably vanished into thin air--I don't
propose to assume that he had nothing to do with the murder of Enid
Withers. I don't intend to be recorded as not having combed the country
for him if necessary.

"That disguised man is no myth. And Morley knows all about beard
'make-up.' His note to me in Furmville proved that. The negro boy, Roddy,
swears Morley and the mysterious stranger are the same.

"There isn't a crook living who can put it over on me this way with a
cheap disguise. And this case isn't cleared up until, in some way, I find
out who he is or get my hands on him." His voice was vibrant with the
intensity of his feeling. "I'm going to find him! I intend to answer, to
my own satisfaction, two questions."

"What are they?"

"The first is: was the bearded man Morley? The second: if Morley wasn't
the bearded man, who was?"

"But, if you do find this hirsute individual, what then? What becomes of
the unassailable evidence against the negro?"

"That will come later. Today I'm going to Baltimore. I've a report
already, this morning, from Platt. He went over there last night. Morley,
I find, deceived us again last night. He said nothing of leaving the
hotel to call on the lawyer, Taliaferro.

"As a matter of fact, he did visit Taliaferro.

"He called the lawyer on the telephone at twenty minutes past two and
said he would go at once to his office. If he had done so, he would have
arrived there at twenty-four minutes past two. He reached there, in fact,
at two-fifty, ten minutes of three. A half-hour of his time isn't
accounted for. He left the hotel at two-twenty-one. Where did he spend
that last half-hour? It's an interesting point."

"Yes," Bristow said, surprised. "Pawnshops?"

"Perhaps--two pawnshops."

"And the pawned diamonds and emeralds are certainly the Withers stuff, a
part of it?"

"I'm sure of it."

"Anyway you look at it," Bristow smiled pleasantly, his manner tinged
with patronizing, "you've a hard job to get away with."

"If," the other ruminated, "the jewels pawned yesterday were not Mrs.
Withers', why wouldn't the man who pawned them come forward and say so?
If there wasn't anything crooked about them, why should he hide himself?
The papers are full of it this morning. It's publ