put in Bristow quickly, "sometimes need
money--need it to make good other money they have 'borrowed' from the
bank. How did you find this out?"

"He told me when I met him at Number Five after leaving you this
afternoon."

"Was he still there then?"

"Yes. It seems that Miss Fulton refused at first to see him. When she did
see him, it was for only a minute or two. He was very much agitated when
he came from her room."

"There's another thing," added Bristow. "Morley has two hours of last
night to account for. He told us he missed the midnight train and went to
the Brevord to spend the night. As a matter of fact, he registered at the
Brevord a little after two o'clock this morning."

The chief's jaw dropped.

"How do you know that?"

"I called up the Brevord and got the information from the clerk."

"That settles it, then," Greenleaf said, his jaw set. "That young man
will have to remain with us for a while."

"Yes; quite properly."

"I guess it's time for us to move." The chief turned toward the door.

"One moment," said the other. "Somehow, I have the impression that we may
get important stuff from Maria Fulton. She may not give it to us directly
and willingly, but we may get it all the same. And I was thinking this:
you and I have got to keep our heads. We don't want to get rattled with
the idea that we're up against an unsolvable mystery.

"As you know, I've lived in New York and Chicago and Cincinnati. For the
past eight or nine years I've gotten a lot of fun out of watching and
studying these cases. And the thing I've learned above all others is that
the best way for a criminal to escape is for the authorities to lose
their heads and think they are up against something that's really much
bigger than it is.

"You see what I mean? What we want to do is to go ahead with our eyes
open, knowing that at any moment we may stumble against the one act that
will make everything clear and definite."

"That's good talk, and I'll try to act on it," replied the chief, "but,
gee whiz! I'm not used to stuff of this sort. It kinder makes me sick."

They went out to the porch.

"By the way," Bristow asked, "what about the two buttons we found?"

"They belonged to Perry," Greenleaf answered. "There's no getting around
that. He had the two middle buttons of his overalls jacket missing.
What's more, one of the buttons, the one that had a little piece of the
cloth clinging to it, fitted exactly into the hole made i