egan to inquire casually from time to time whether Miss
Kennard had sent in any word. He was not good at concealing his
thoughts, and he was manifestly worried by the prospect of possible
developments, but Mern was not able to pin him down to anything
specific. As a matter of fact, Crowley had not fathomed the mystery of
Miss Kennard's actions in Adonia and was not in a way to do so by any
processes of his limited intelligence; he admitted as much to himself.

He was clumsy in his efforts to extract from the chief something in
regard to the report which supposedly had been sent in by Miss Kennard,
and Mern's suspicions were stirred afresh. He gave Crowley no
information on that point; one excellent reason why he did not do so
was this: Miss Kennard had not sent in any report. Mern was still
waiting to hear from her as to certain details; he wanted to talk with
her. Crowley ventured to state that she had left Adonia, and he
suggested that she was on the trail of Latisan. The operative, pressed
for reasons why she was still pursuing Latisan, if the drive master had
been separated from his job by Crowley, averred that, according to his
best judgment, the girl had gone crazy. That statement did not satisfy
Mern, but it enabled Crowley to avoid tripping too often over
inconsistencies.

Under those circumstances the uneasy feeling persisted in Chief Mern
that the Latisan case was not finished, in spite of Craig's compliments
and Crowley's boasts and Miss Elsham's bland agreement as to facts as
stated, though with avoidance of details.

Mern usually shut down the cover on a case as soon as the point had been
won; he had found in too many instances that memory nagged; he had
assured Craig that having to do what a detective chief was called on to
do in his business had not given him the spirit of a buccaneer.

But in this case the lack of candor in his operatives disturbed him,
though he did not presume to arraign them; he could not do that
consistently; in the interests of his peace of mind he had always
assured his workers that they need not trouble him with details after a
job had been done.

Crowley, mystified, had said nothing about the amazing love affair. It
occurred to him that the protestations of Miss Kennard might have been a
part of her campaign of subtlety, interrupted by his smashing in; he
was more than ever convinced that his was not the kind of mind that
could deal with subtlety.

Miss Elsham never mentio