you got there?"

Liddy pushed aside a half-dozen geranium pots, and in the space thus
cleared she dumped the contents of her apron--a handful of tiny bits of
paper. Alex had stepped back, but I saw him watching her curiously.

"Wait a moment, Liddy," I said. "You have been going through the
library paper-basket again!"

Liddy was arranging her bits of paper with the skill of long practice
and paid no attention.

"Did it ever occur to you," I went on, putting my hand over the scraps,
"that when people tear up their correspondence, it is for the express
purpose of keeping it from being read?"

"If they wasn't ashamed of it they wouldn't take so much trouble, Miss
Rachel," Liddy said oracularly. "More than that, with things happening
every day, I consider it my duty. If you don't read and act on this, I
shall give it to that Jamieson, and I'll venture he'll not go back to
the city to-day."

That decided me. If the scraps had anything to do with the mystery
ordinary conventions had no value. So Liddy arranged the scraps, like
working out one of the puzzle-pictures children play with, and she did
it with much the same eagerness. When it was finished she stepped
aside while I read it.

"Wednesday night, nine o'clock. Bridge," I real aloud. Then, aware of
Alex's stare, I turned on Liddy.

"Some one is to play bridge to-night at nine o'clock," I said. "Is that
your business, or mine?"

Liddy was aggrieved. She was about to reply when I scooped up the
pieces and left the conservatory.

"Now then," I said, when we got outside, "will you tell me why you
choose to take Alex into your confidence? He's no fool. Do you
suppose he thinks any one in this house is going to play bridge
to-night at nine o'clock, by appointment! I suppose you have shown it
in the kitchen, and instead of my being able to slip down to the bridge
to-night quietly, and see who is there, the whole household will be
going in a procession."

"Nobody knows it," Liddy said humbly. "I found it in the basket in
Miss Gertrude's dressing-room. Look at the back of the sheet." I
turned over some of the scraps, and, sure enough, it was a blank
deposit slip from the Traders' Bank. So Gertrude was going to meet
Jack Bailey that night by the bridge! And I had thought he was ill!
It hardly seemed like the action of an innocent man--this avoidance of
daylight, and of his fiancee's people. I decided to make certain,
however, by going to the brid