he queer part of it," Riggs said eagerly. "She didn't come
out that night at all. I went to bed at daylight, and that was the
last I heard of her until the next day, when I saw her on a truck at
the station, covered with a sheet. She'd been struck by the express
and you would hardly have known her--dead, of course. I think she
stayed all night in the Armstrong house, and the agent said she was
crossing the track to take the up-train to town when the express struck
her."

"Another circle!" I exclaimed. "Then we are just where we started."

"Not so bad as that, Miss Innes," Riggs said eagerly. "Nina Carrington
came from the town in California where Mr. Armstrong died. Why was the
doctor so afraid of her? The Carrington woman knew something. I lived
with Doctor Walker seven years, and I know him well. There are few
things he is afraid of. I think he killed Mr. Armstrong out in the
west somewhere, that's what I think. What else he did I don't
know--but he dismissed me and pretty nearly throttled me--for telling
Mr. Jamieson here about Mr. Innes' having been at his office the night
he disappeared, and about my hearing them quarreling."

"What was it Warner overheard the woman say to Mr. Innes, in the
library?" the detective asked me.

"She said 'I knew there was something wrong from the start. A man
isn't well one day and dead the next without some reason.'"

How perfectly it all seemed to fit!

CHAPTER XXX

WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN

It was on Wednesday Riggs told us the story of his connection with some
incidents that had been previously unexplained. Halsey had been gone
since the Friday night before, and with the passage of each day I felt
that his chances were lessening. I knew well enough that he might be
carried thousands of miles in the box-car, locked in, perhaps, without
water or food. I had read of cases where bodies had been found locked
in cars on isolated sidings in the west, and my spirits went down with
every hour.

His recovery was destined to be almost as sudden as his disappearance,
and was due directly to the tramp Alex had brought to Sunnyside. It
seems the man was grateful for his release, and when he learned some
thing of Halsey's whereabouts from another member of his
fraternity--for it is a fraternity--he was prompt in letting us know.

On Wednesday evening Mr. Jamieson, who had been down at the Armstrong
house trying to see Louise--and failing--was met near the gate at
S