ou now, and the
city commissioners will confirm it. They meet tonight. You're on the
force--at a nominal salary--say ten dollars a week. That suit you?"

"Perfectly," consented Bristow. "What I want is the power to help in case
I have the opportunity."

Greenleaf went out to the porch, followed by Bristow, and started down
the steps.

"By the way," his new employee said in a cautious tone, "don't forget to
stop at Number Five and look for those scratches, on the fingers and the
neck."

"By cracky!" exclaimed the chief. "I'd forgotten all about it. I'll do
that right away."

Looking toward No. 5, Bristow saw a hearse-like wagon drawing up in front
of the door. The coroner had already made arrangements for the removal of
the body of Mrs. Withers to an undertaking establishment.

The lame man went slowly into the house and stood at the window, staring
at the mountains. In the clear, newly washed air, they looked like the
soft, tumbling waves of some magically blue sea.

Like most retiring, secluded men, he had his vanity in pronounced degree.
He saw himself now, the dominant figure in this city of thirty thousand
people, the man who had been selected by the chief of police as the one
able to unravel the web of mystery surrounding this startling murder. The
thought pleased him, and he smiled. He began to think about himself and
about life as a general proposition.

Everything was always so mixed up, so involved. People talked of a divine
providence, of the law that virtue is rewarded, of the rule that to do
good is to have good done to one. He smiled again. If all that was true,
what explanation was there for the murder of this woman, this beauty
whose good nature, kindness, and cleverness had endeared her to all with
whom she came in contact?

He had heard the women on the porch of No. 5 say that everybody had loved
her. Why, then, had some ignorant negro or some white man bent on robbery
been permitted to steal up on her in the dead of night and crush out her
life? Was there any reason, any logic, any mercy in that?

He drummed on the window-pane with his fingertips and whistled, scarcely
audibly, a fragment of tune. His pursed up mouth made it clear that he
was not a handsome man--the lower lip was heavy, somewhat protuberant.

Pshaw! There was only one rule of life that held good, so far as he had
been able to see. Strength and persistence accomplished things and
brought success and security. Weakness and f