ofessor Darling's house on Summer Avenue."

"At Professor Darling's house?" Mr. Byrd felt a sensation of dismay.
Professor Darling's house was, as you remember, in almost direct
communication with Mrs. Clemmens' cottage by means of a path through
the woods. As Mr. Byrd recalled his first experience in threading those
woods, and remembered with what suddenness he had emerged from them only
to find himself in full view of the West Side and Professor Darling's
spacious villa, he stared uneasily at his colleague and said:

"It is train time, Hickory, but I cannot help that. Before I leave this
town I must know just what she was doing on that morning, and whom she
was with. Can you find out?"

"_Can I find out?_"

The hardy detective was out of the door before the last word of this
scornful repetition had left his lips.

He was gone an hour. When he returned he looked very much excited.

"Well!" he ejaculated, breathlessly, "I have had an experience."

Mr. Byrd gave him a look, saw something he did not like in his face, and
moved uneasily in his chair.

"You have?" he retorted. "What is it? Speak."

"Do you know," the other resumed, "that the hardest thing I ever had to
do was to keep my head down in the hut the other day, and deny myself a
look at the woman who could bear herself so bravely in the midst of a
scene so terrible. Well," he went on, "I have to-day been rewarded for
my self-control. I have seen Miss Dare."

Horace Byrd could scarcely restrain his impatience.

"Where?" he demanded. "How? Tell a fellow, can't you?"

"I am going to," protested Hickory. "Cannot you wait a minute? _I_ had
to wait forty. Well," he continued more pleasantly as he saw the other
frown, "I went to Professor Darling's. There is a girl there I have
talked to before, and I had no difficulty in seeing her or getting a
five minutes' chat with her at the back-gate. Odd how such girls will
talk! She told me in three minutes all I wanted to know. Not that it was
so much, only----"

"Do get on," interrupted Mr. Byrd. "When did Miss Dare come to the house
on the morning Mrs. Clemmens was murdered, and what did she do while
there?"

"She came early; by ten o'clock or so, I believe, and she sat, if she
did sit, in an observatory they have at the top of the house: a place
where she often used to go, I am told, to study astronomy with Professor
Darling's oldest daughter."

"And was Miss Darling with her that morning? Did they study to