ess
sensitive imagination than Hitchin's. Whatever troubled the crime
specialist, David Prentiss would have to be lied out of here in detail,
lied home and lied to bed.

"Hitchin," said Anthony, "Heaven alone knows what concern of yours it
can be, but the Prentiss boy--the son of an old friend of mine who has
seen better days--came back here with me last night for some things,
cast-offs, I had promised his unfortunate father. We met him on the
street on the way home."

"Just around the corner," supplied Johnson Boller, who was growing
steadily more anxious to speak his mind to Anthony about the Mrs. Boller
matter.

"And having come upstairs with us and having selected the things he
thought his father would like best," Anthony went on, "they were wrapped
in a bundle or ordinary brown paper, tied up with ordinary,
non-mysterious, crime-proof string and carried out by David, who, I have
no doubt at all, reached home within half an hour, gave the clothes to
his father, said his prayers and went to bed without further ado. If
there is anything else you'd like to know, ask!"

Hobart Hitchin had not blinked. Now he smiled strangely and shrugged his
shoulders.

"At least," said he, "you have perfected the story, haven't you?"

"I----"

"And now," Mr. Hitchin broke in incisively, "let us consider the facts!
We will take them, one by one, and I beg that you will listen. Item one:
I sat in the lobby downstairs until seventeen minutes of one o'clock
this morning, Fry. No David Prentiss passed me, going out. Nobody left
this hotel with a bundle or a bag!"

"You didn't see him," Anthony said.

"Because he was not there! Listen, please, and do not interrupt, Fry. I
like you, or I should not be here. I wish to help you, if such a thing
is possible, or I should have gone at once to the police," said the
remarkable Mr. Hitchin. "You, like many a man before you, forget
perfectly plain details. In this case, you have forgotten that my
apartment is directly beneath yours--that the elevators here have
latticed gates, so that one can see from any floor whoever may be
passing in one of the cars--that sound travels perfectly in this
building when the street is quiet, as at night. So to get to item two.
About two o'clock this morning there was the sound of a heavy fall in
this very room!"

Johnson Boller was grasping the trend more rapidly than was Anthony, and
he was growing less comfortable.

"I fell!" he said.

"Did you real