e
changed your attitude quickly. Where did you learn so much about him? How
can you be so positive about a man you never have met? Whom you have seen
only a time or two at a distance, on some street--or was it a hotel
lobby?--in Valdez or Fairbanks?"

"Yesterday, when we were talking, that was true; but since then I have
seen him at close range. I've heard him." She turned and met Feversham's
scrutiny with the brilliancy rising in her eyes. "Last night at the
clubhouse, when he told the story of David Weatherbee, I was there."

"You were there? Impossible! That is against the rules. Not a man of the
Circle would have permitted it, and you certainly would have been
discovered before you reached the assembly hall. Why, I myself was the
last to arrive. Frederic, you remember, had to speed the car a little to
get me there. And I looked back from the door and saw you in the tonneau
with Elizabeth, while Mrs. Weatherbee kept her place in front with
Frederic. You were going down the boulevard to spend the evening with her
at Vivian Court."

"That was our plan, but we turned back," she explained. "We had a
curiosity to see the Circle seated around the banquet board in those
ridiculous purple parkas. And Frederic bet me a new electric runabout
against the parka of silver fox and the mukluks I bought of the Esquimau
girl at Valdez that we never could get as far as the assembly room. He
waited with Elizabeth in the car while we two crept up the stairs. The
door was open, and we stood almost screened by that portiere of Indian
leather, peeping in. Mr. Tisdale was telling the ptarmigan yarn--it's
wonderful the power he has to hold the interest of a crowd of men--and the
chance was too good to miss. We stole on up the steps to the gallery,--no
one noticed us,--and concealed ourselves behind that hanging Kodiak
bearskin."

"Incredible!" exclaimed Feversham. "But I see you arrived at the opportune
moment,--when Tisdale was talking. There's something occult about the
personality of that man. And she, Mrs. Weatherbee, heard everything?"

Marcia nodded. "Even your graceful toast to her."

At this he settled back in his seat, laughing. "Well, I am glad I made it.
I could hardly have put it more neatly had I known she was there."

"She couldn't have missed a word. We had found a bench behind the Kodiak
skin, and she sat straight as a soldier, listening through it all. I
couldn't get her to come away; it was as though she was looking