pped from his fingers and Theodore Dalton collapsed!

Gray, gasping, unable to speak at first, he crumpled into the chair
beside the table and stared up numbly at Hobart Hitchin, who smiled just
as he had always meant to smile in the event of such a moment coming
before his death.

"You--you!" Dalton choked. "You say--the wearer of those trousers has
been _murdered_?"

"As you know," said Hobart Hitchin. "The boy----"

"A boy about twenty-two, smooth shaven--a nice kid--a boy with a shock
of brown hair and--and----" Theodore Dalton cried, in a queer, broken
little voice, as he gripped the table. "No! No! Not that boy!"

"That boy!" said Hitchin. "David Prentiss!"

Dalton's whole soul seemed to burst!

"It was no David Prentiss!" he cried. "My--my daughter's gone and now my
only son has been murdered!"

CHAPTER XIV

Concerning Three Groups

For the first time, Wilkins looked at Mr. Bates and thought swiftly.
Having thought for half a minute, he had accomplished a complete circle
and was exactly where he had started. It was plain that the maid Felice
was somewhere else; equally plain was it that, for the purpose of the
moment, the maid Felice could satisfactorily be in but one place--and
that right here!

Had she merely been out for a little time he could have taken the trunk
to her room and, opening the lid a bit, could have fled with his task
accomplished; she was, however, out permanently--so that the very best
Wilkins had accomplished at the end of a full minute was:

"Out? Quite so. But where has the young person gone, if you please?"

Mr. Bates scowled angrily.

"We don't know, I've told you!" he said sharply. "When one of the help's
dismissed under circumstances like that, we don't trouble to ask where
she's going and we don't keep her address."

"But she might be having mail to forward----" Wilkins essayed hopefully.

"Any mail that comes for her'll be handed to the carrier again," Bates
snapped. "And now will you get her box out of here, you? I can't have it
about, and I've no time this morning to argue with you. The master's
daughter's disappeared and we're all on edge."

"And not a soul in the world knowing where she's gone, poor lamb!"
sniveled the under-laundress, laying a hand on the trunk that held Mary.
"And her that home-loving she never----"

"Hush!" said Mr. Bates.

The woman subsided into her apron.

"Whatever's taken her, she's trying to get home! She's trying----" she