ad been crying all day, and bought some headache
medicine for her.

On Wednesday morning, however, she had appeared at breakfast, eaten
heartily, and had asked Miss Shaeffer to take her letter to the
post-office. It was addressed to Mr. Ellis Howell, in care of a
Pittsburgh newspaper!

That night when Miss Eliza went home, about half past eight, the woman
was gone. She had paid for her room and had been driven as far as
Thornville, where all trace of her had been lost. On account of the
disappearance of Jennie Brice being published shortly after that, she
and her mother had driven to Thornville, but the station agent there
was surly as well as stupid. They had learned nothing about the woman.

Since that time, three men had made inquiries about the woman in
question. One had a pointed Vandyke beard; the second, from the
description, I fancied must have been Mr. Graves. The third without
doubt was Mr. Howell. Eliza Shaeffer said that this last man had
seemed half frantic. I brought her a photograph of Jennie Brice as
"Topsy" and another one as "Juliet". She said there was a resemblance,
but that it ended there. But of course, as Mr. Graves had said, by the
time an actress gets her photograph retouched to suit her, it doesn't
particularly resemble her. And unless I had known Jennie Brice myself,
I should hardly have recognized the pictures.

Well, in spite of all that, there seemed no doubt that Jennie Brice
had been living three days after her disappearance, and that would
clear Mr. Ladley. But what had Mr. Howell to do with it all? Why had
he not told the police of the letter from Horner? Or about the woman
on the bridge? Why had Mr. Bronson, who was likely the man with the
pointed beard, said nothing about having traced Jennie Brice to
Horner?

I did as I thought Mr. Holcombe would have wished me to do. I wrote
down on a clean sheet of note-paper all that Eliza Shaeffer said: the
description of the black and white dress, the woman's height, and the
rest, and then I took her to the court-house, chicks and all, and she
told her story there to one of the assistant district attorneys.

The young man was interested, but not convinced. He had her story
taken down, and she signed it. He was smiling as he bowed us out. I
turned in the doorway.

"This will free Mr. Ladley, I suppose?" I asked.

"Not just yet," he said pleasantly. "This makes just eleven places
where Jennie Brice spent the first three days after her de