Читать книгу: «The Million-Dollar Suitcase», страница 16

The lawyer shook his head, but I didn't believe it was ended between them; Dykeman was the devil to hang on to a point. This would come up again after I was gone. Meantime I made haste to shove the photographs before them. Cummings passed them back with an indifferent, "What's the idea?"

"You don't recognize him?"

"Never saw the man in my life," and again he asked, "What's the idea?"

"You'd recognize a picture of Clayte?" I countered with a question of my own.

"Yes – I think so," rather dubiously. "But Dykeman would. Show them to him."

Dykeman reached for the photographs, spread them out before him, then looked up from them peevishly to say,

"For the good Lord's sake! Don't look any more like Clayte than it does like a horned toad. Is that what you've been wasting your time over, Boyne? If you ask me – "

"I don't ask you anything," retrieving the pictures, planting them deep in an inner pocket. Then I got myself out of the room.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of the Fremont House, I felt sort of bewildered. This last crack had taken all the pep I had left. I suddenly realized it was long after dinner time, and I'd had no dinner, no lunch, nothing to eat since an early breakfast. Worth had sent me to the girl – and I hadn't gone. I dragged myself around to Capehart's cottage as nearly whipped as I ever was in my life.

I found Barbara with Laura Bowman, every one else off the place, out at the shows. Those girls sure were good to me; they fed me and didn't ask questions till I was ready to talk. Nothing to be said really, except that I'd failed. I told them of meeting the Vandemans, and gave them Ina Vandeman's opinion as to how Worth's friends should conduct themselves just now.

"So they'll all be out there," I concluded, "Vandeman and his wife leading the grand march, her sisters as maids of honor – except Skeet, staying at home with her mother. Cummings goes as a Roman soldier; Doctor Bowman as a Spanish cavalier. Edwards didn't see it as the Vandemans do, but after I'd talked to him awhile, he agreed to be there."

And suddenly I noticed for the first time how the relative position of these two women had shifted. Laura Bowman wasn't red-headed for nothing; out from under the blight of Bowman and that hateful marriage, she had already thrown off some of her physical frailness; the nervous tension showed itself now in energy. She was moving swiftly about putting to rights after my meal while she listened. But Barbara sat looking straight ahead of her; I knew she was seeing streets full of carnival, every friend and acquaintance out at a ball – and Worth in a murderer's cell. It wouldn't do. I jumped to my feet with a brisk,

"Girl, where's your hat? We'll go to the study and look over all our points once more. Get busy – get busy. That's the medicine for you."

She gave me a miserable look and a negative shake of the head; but I still urged, "Worth sent me to you. The last thing he said was, 'Take it to Bobs.'"

Dumbly she submitted. Mrs. Bowman came running with the girl's hat, and, "What about me, Mr. Boyne? Isn't there something I can do?"

"I wish you'd go to the country club – to the ball – the same as all the others. Got a costume here, haven't you?"

"Yes, I can wear Barbara's," she glanced to where a pile of soft black stuff, a red scarf, a scarlet poppy wreath, lay on a chair, "She was to have gone as 'The Lady of Dreams.'"

Barbara went with me out into the flare of carnival illumination that paled the afterglow of a gorgeous sunset. No cars allowed on these down-town streets; even walking, we found it best to take the long way round. To our left the town roared and racketed as though it was afire. Nothing said between us till I grumbled out,

"I wish I knew where Cummings was keeping Eddie Hughes."

Barbara's voice beside me answered unexpectedly,

"Here. In Santa Ysobel. Eddie was at Capehart's fifteen minutes before you got there; he came for Bill. A gasoline engine at the city hall had broken down."

I pulled up short for a moment, and looked back at the town.

"Where'd he go?"

"With Bill, to the city hall. Eddie's one of the queen's guards. They're all to be at the country club at ten o'clock to review the grand march that opens the ball."

I mustn't let her dwell on that. I hurried on once more, and neither of us spoke again till I unlocked the study door, snapped on the lights, brought out and put on the table the 1920 diary and the little blue blotter – the last bits of evidence that I felt hadn't been thoroughly analysed. Barbara just dropped into a chair and looked from them to me helplessly.

"You've read this all – carefully?" she sighed.

It shook me. To have Barbara, the girl I'd seen get meanings and facts from a written page with a mere flirt of a glance, ask me that. What I really wanted from her was an inspection of the book and blotter, and a deduction from it. As though she guessed, she answered with a sort of wail,

"I can't, I can't even remember what I did see when I looked at these before. I – can't – remember!"

I went and knelt on the hearth with a pretext of laying a fire there, since the shut-up room was chill. And when I glanced stealthily over my shoulder, she had gone to work; not as I had ever seen her before, but fumbling at the leaves, hesitating, turning to finger the blotter; setting her lips desperately, like an over-driven school-child, but keeping right on. I spun out my fire building to leave her to herself. Little noises of her moving there at the table; rustle and flutter of the leaves; now and again, a long, sobbing breath. At last something like a groan caused me to turn my head and see her, with face pale as death, eyes staring across into mine.

"It was Clayte – Edward Clayte – who killed Mr. Gilbert here – in this room."

The hair on the back of my neck stirred; I thought the girl had gone mad. As I ran over to the table and looked at what was under her hand, it came again.

"He did. He did. It was Clayte – the wonder man!"

"Do – do you deduce that, Barbara?"

"Did I?" she raised to mine the face of a sick child. "I must have. See – it's here on the blotter: 'y-t-e,' that's Clayte. Double l-e-r; that's 'teller,' 'Avenue' is part of 'Van Ness Avenue Bank.' Oh, yes; I deduced it, I suppose. Both crimes end in a locked room and a perfect alibi. But – but – don't you see, if it is true – and it is – it is – we're worse off than we were before. We've the wonder man against us."

"Barbara," I cried. "Barbara, come out of it!"

"See? You don't believe in me any more," and her head went down on the table.

I let her cry, while I sat and thought. The broken sentences she'd sobbed out to me began to fit up like a puzzle-game. By all theories of good detective work, I should have seen from the first the similarity of these crimes. But Clayte, slipping in here to do this murder – and why? What mixed him up with affairs here? And then the icy pang – Dykeman had seen a connection – Cummings had found one. With them, it was Clayte and his gang – and his gang was Worth Gilbert. I went and touched Barbara on the shoulder.

"I'm going to take you home now."

"Yes," tears running down her face as she stumbled to her feet. "I'm a failure. I can't do anything for Worth."

I wiped her cheeks with my own handkerchief and led her out. As I turned from locking the door, it seemed to me I saw something move in the shrubbery. I asked Barbara Wallace about it. She hadn't noticed anything. Barbara Wallace hadn't noticed anything!

I began to be scared for her. Solemn in the sky above boomed out the town clock – two strokes. Half past nine. I must get this poor child home. We were getting in toward the noise and the light when I felt her shiver, and stopped to say,

"Did I forget your coat? Why, where's your hat?"

"The hat's back there. I had no coat. It doesn't make any difference. Come on. I can't – can't – I must get home."

I looked at her, saw she was about at the end of her strength, and decided quickly,

"We'll go straight through the Square. Save time and steps."

She offered no objection, and we started in where the bands played for the street dances, amid the raucous tooting of a thousand fish-horns, the clangor of cow-bells, and the occasional snap of the forbidden fire-cracker. As we turned from Broad Street into Main, I found that the congestion was greater even than I had supposed. Here, several blocks away from the city hall, progress was so difficult that I took Barbara back a block to get the street that paralleled Main. This we could navigate slowly. Here, also, everybody was masked. Confetti flew, serpentines unreeled themselves out through the air, dusters spluttered in faces, and among the Pierrettes, Pierrots, Columbines, sombrero-ed cowboys, bandana-ed cow-girls, Indians, Sambos, Topsies and Poppy Maidens, Barbara's little white linen slip and soft white sweater, and my grey business suit, were more conspicuous than would have been the Ahkoond of Swat and his Captive Slave. Even after the confetti had sprinkled her black hair until it reminded me of Skeet's blossom wreath, infinitely multiplied, I still saw the glances through the eye-holes of masks follow us wonderingly.

Opposite the city hall, where we must cross to get to the Capehart street, we were again almost stopped by the dense crowd. The Square was a green-turfed dancing floor; from its stand, an orchestra jazzed out the latest and dizziest of dances; and countless couples one-stepped on the grass, on the asphalt of the streets, even over the lawns of adjacent houses, tree trunks and flower beds adding more things to be dodged. At one corner, where the crowd was thick, we saw a big man being wound to a pole by paper serpentines. Yelling and capering, the masked dancers milled around and around him, winding the gay ribbons, while others with confetti and the Spanish cascarones, tried to snow him under. As we came up, a big fist wagged and Bill Capehart's voice roared,

"Hold on! Too much is a-plenty!"

He tore himself loose, streaming with paper strips, bent and filled his fists from the confetti at his feet. His tormentors howled and dropped back as much as they could for the hemming crowd; he rushed them, heaving paper ammunition in a hail-storm, and reached us in two or three jumps.

"Golly!" he roared, "Me for a cyclone cellar! This is a riot. You ain't in costume, either. Wonder they wouldn't pick on you."

With the words they did. I put Barbara behind me, and was conscious only of a blinding snow of paper flakes, the punch and slap of dusters, in an uproar of horns and bells.

"Good deal like fighting a swarm of bees in your shirt-tail with a willow switch," old Bill panted at my shoulder. "Gosh!" as the snapping of firecrackers let loose beneath our feet. "Some o' these mosquito-net skirts'll get afire next – then there'll be hell a-popping!"

Close at hand there was a louder report, as of a giant cracker, and at that Barbara sagged against me. I whirled and put an arm about her. Bill grabbed her from me, and lifted her above the pressure of the crowd. I charged ahead, shouting,

"Gangway! Let us through!"

Willing enough, the mob could not make room for passage until my shoulder, lowered to strike at the breast, forced a way, that closed in the instant Bill gained through. It was football tactics, with me bucking the line, Bill carrying the ball. Fortunately, the bunch was a good-natured festival gathering, or my rough work might have brought us trouble. As it was, a short, stiff struggle took us to the outer fringe of the mob.

"How is she? What happened?" I grunted, coming to a stop.

"Search me." Bill twisted around to look at the white face that lay back on his shoulder, with closed lids. Three strokes chimed from the city hall tower. Barbara's eyes flashed open; as the last stroke trembled in the air, Barbara's voice came, sharp with breathless urgence,

"A quarter of ten! Quick – get me to the country club!"

"Take you there? Now, d'ye mean?" I ejaculated; and holding her like a baby, Bill's eyes flared into mine. "Did something happen to you back there, girl? Or did you just faint?"

"Never mind about me! There," that glance of hers that saw everything indicated a parking place packed with machines half a block away up a side street. "Carry me there. Take one of those cars. Get me to the country club. Don't – " as I opened my mouth, "don't ask questions."

I turned and ran. Bill galloped behind. Barbara had lifted her head to cry after me,

"The best one! Pick the fastest!"

I plunged down the line of cars, looking for a good machine and one with whose drive I was familiar. The guard rushed up to stop me; I showed him my badge, leaped into the front seat of a speed-built Tarpon, and had it out by the time Bill came up with the girl in his arms. I turned and swung open the tonneau door. Almost with one movement, he lifted her in and climbed after. I started off with braying horn, and at that I had to use caution. Making my way toward the corner of the street that led to Bill's house, I felt a small hand clutch the slack of my coat between the shoulders, and Barbara's voice, faint, but with a fury of determination in it, demanded,

"Where are you going? I said the country club."

"All right; I'll go. I'll look after whatever you want out there when I've got you home."

"Oh, oh," she moaned. "Won't you – this one time – take orders?"

I went on past the corner. She had a right to put it just that way. I gave the Tarpon all I dared in town streets.

"What time is it?" I heard her whispering to Bill. "Eight minutes to ten? I have to be there by ten, or it's no use. Can he make it? Do you think he can make it?"

"Yes," I growled, crouching behind the wheel. "I'll make it. May have to kill a few – but I'll get you there."

By this, we'd come out on the open highway, better, but not too clear, either. There followed seven minutes of ripping through the night, of people who ran yelling to get out of our way and hurled curses behind us, only a few cars meeting us like the whirling of comets in terrifying glimpses as we shot past; and, at last, the country club; strings of gay lanterns, winking ruby tail-lights of machines parked in front of it, the glare from its windows, and the strains of the orchestra in its ballroom, playing "On the Beach at Waikiki." When she heard it, Barbara thanked God with,

"We're in time!"

I took that machine up to the front steps over space never intended for automobiles, at a pace not proper for lawns or even roads, and only halted when I was half across the walk. Bill rolled from the tonneau door and stood by it. I jumped down and came around.

"Lift me out, and put me on my feet," Barbara ordered. "Help me – one on each side. I can walk. I must!"

We crossed a deserted porch; the evening's opening event – the grand march – had drawn every one, servants and all, inside. So far, without challenge, meeting no one. We had the place to ourselves till we stood, the three of us alone, before the upper entrance of the assembly room. In there, the last strains of Waikiki died away. I looked to Barbara. She was in command. Her words back there in town had settled that for me.

"What do we do now?" I asked.

White as the linen she wore, the girl's face shone with some inner fire of passionate resolution. I saw this, too, in the determined, almost desperate energy with which she held herself erect, one clenched hand pressed hard against her side.

"Take me in there, Mr. Boyne. And you," to Capehart, "find a man you can trust to guard each door of the ballroom."

"What you say goes." Big Bill wheeled like a well trained cart-horse and had taken a step or two, when she called after him,

"Arrest any one who attempts to enter."

"Arrest 'em if they try to git in," Capehart repeated stoically. "Sure. That goes." But I interrupted,

"You mean if they try to get out."

At that she gave me a look. No time or breath to waste. Bill, unquestioning, had hurried to his part of the work. I took up mine with, "Forgive me, Barbara. I'll not make that mistake again"; slipped my arm under hers to support her; dragged open the big doors; shoved past the hallman there; and we stepped into the many-colored, moving brilliance of the ballroom.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE COUNTRY CLUB BALL

The ballroom of the country club at Santa Ysobel is big and finely proportioned. I don't know if anything of the sort could have registered with me at the moment, but I remembered afterward my impression of the great hall fairly walled and roofed with fruit blossoms, and the gorgeousness of hundreds of costumes. The mere presence of potential funds raises the importance of an event. The prune kings and apricot barons down there, with their wives and daughters in real brocades, satins and velvets, with genuine jewels flashing over them, represented so much in the way of substantial wealth that it seemed to steady the whole fantastic scene.

Barbara and I entered on the level of the slightly raised orchestra stand and only half a dozen paces from it. Nobody noticed us much; we came in right on the turn of things – floor managers darting around, orchestra with bows poised and horns at lips, the whole glittering company of maskers being made ready to weave their "Figure of Eight" across the dancing floor. My poor girl dragged on my arm; her small feet scuffed; I lifted her along, wishing I might pick her up and carry her as Bill had done. I made for an unoccupied musicians' bench; but once there, she only leaned against it, not letting go her hold on me, and stood to take in every detail of the confused, moving scene.

The double doors had swung closed behind us; the hallman there who held the knob, now reinforced by a uniformed policeman. The servants' way, at the further end was shut; men in plain clothes set their backs against it. And last, Big Bill himself in overalls, a touch of blunt blue realism, came fogging along the side-wall to swing into place the great wooden bar that secured the entire group of glass doors which gave on the porch. Barbara would have seen all these arrangements while I was getting ready for my first glance, but I prompted her nervously with a low-toned, "All set, girl," and then as she still didn't speak, "Bill's got every door guarded."

She nodded. The length of the room away, in the end gallery, was the cannery girl queen and her guard. Even at that distance, I recognized Eddie Hughes, in his pink-and-white Beef Eater togs, a gilded wooden spear in his hand, a flower tassel bobbing beside that long, drab, knobby countenance of his. There he was, the man I'd jailed for Thomas Gilbert's murder. Below on the dancing floor, were the two, Cummings and Bowman, who had put Worth behind the bars for the same crime. At my side was the pale, silent girl who declared that Clayte was the murderer.

Whispered tuning and trying of instruments up here; flutter and rush about down on the dancing floor; and Barbara, that clenched left hand of hers still pressed in hard against her side, facing what problem?

Crash! Boom! We were so close the music fairly deafened us, as, with a multiplied undernote of moving feet, the march began. On came those people toward us, wave behind wave of color and magnificence, dotted with little black ovals of masks pierced by gleaming eye-holes. I could sense Barbara reading the room as it bore down on her, and reading it clearly, getting whatever it was she had come there for. Myself, I was overwhelmed, drowned in the size and sweep of everything, struggling along, whispering to her when I spotted Jim Edwards in his friar's robe, noticed that the Roman soldier who must be Cummings, and Bowman, the Spaniard, squired the Thornhill twins in their geisha girl dresses; the crimson poppies of a Lady of Dreams looked odd against Laura Bowman's coppery hair.

At the head of the procession as they swung around, leading it with splendid dignity, came a pair who might have been Emperor and Empress of China – the Vandemans. To go on with affairs as if nothing had happened – though Worth Gilbert was in jail – had been the laid-down policy of both Vandeman and his wife. I'd thought it reasonable then; foolish to get hot at it now. The great, shining, rhythmically moving line deployed, interwove, and opened out again until at last the floor was almost evenly occupied with the many-colored mass. I looked at Barbara; the awful intensity with which she read her room hurt me. It had nothing to do with that flirt of a glance she always gave a printed page, that mere toss of attention she was apt to offer a problem. The child was in anguish, whether merely the ache of sorrow, or actual bodily pain; I saw how rigidly that small fist still pressed against the knitted wool of her sweater, how her lip was drawn in and bitten. Her physical weakness contrasted strangely with the clean cut decision, the absolute certainty of her mental power. She raised her face and looked straight up into mine.

"Have the music stopped."

I leaned over and down toward the orchestra leader to catch his eye, holding toward him the badge. His glance caught it, and I told him what we wanted. He nodded. For an instant the music flooded on, then at a sharp rap of the baton, broke off in mid-motion, as though some great singing thing had caught its breath. And all the swaying life and color on the floor stopped as suddenly. Barbara had picked the moment that brought Ina Vandeman and her husband squarely facing us. After the first instant's bewilderment, Vandeman and his floor managers couldn't fail to realize that they were being held up by an outsider; with Barbara in full sight up here by the orchestra, they must know who was doing it. I wondered not to have Vandeman in my hair already; but he and his consort stood in dignified silence; it was his committee who came after me, a Mephistopheles, a troubadour, an Indian brave, a Hercules with his club, swarming up the step, wanting to know if I was the man responsible, why the devil I had done it, who the devil I thought I was, anyhow. Others were close behind.

"Edwards," I called to the brown friar, "can you keep these fellows off me for a minute?"

Still not a word from Barbara. Nothing from Vandeman. Less than nothing: I watched in astonishment how the gorgeous leader stopped dumb, while those next him backed into the couple behind, side stepping, so that the whole line yawed, swayed, and began to fall into disorder.

"Cummings," as I glimpsed the lawyer's chain mail and purple feather, "Keep them all in place if you can. All."

In the instant, from behind my shoulder Barbara spoke.

"Have that man – take off his mask."

A little, shaking white hand pointed at the leader.

"Mr. Vandeman," I said. "That's an order. It'll have to be done."

The words froze everything. Hardly a sound or movement in the great crowded room, except the little rustle as some one tried to see better. And there, all eyes on him, Bronson Vandeman stood with his arms at his sides, mute as a fish. Ina fumbled nervously at the cord of her own mask, calling to me in a fierce undertone,

"What do you mean, Mr. Boyne, bringing that girl here to spoil things. This is spite-work."

"Off – take his mask off! Do it yourself!" Barbara's voice was clear and steady.

I made three big jumps of the space between us and the leading couple. Vandeman's committee-men obstructed me, the excited yip going amongst them.

"Vandeman – Bronse – Vannie – Who let this fool in here? – Do we throw him out?"

Then they took the words from Edwards; the tune changed to grumblings of, "What's the matter with Van? Why doesn't he settle it one way or another, and be done?"

Why didn't he? I had but a breath of time to wonder at that, as I shoved a way through. Darn him, like a graven image there, the only mute, immovable thing in that turmoil! I began to feel sore.

"You heard what she said?" I took no trouble now to be civil. "She wants your mask off."

No flicker of response from the man, but the Empress of China dragged down her mask, crying,

"Heard what she said? What she wants?" Over the shoulders of the crowd she gave Barbara Wallace a venomous look, then came at me.

A little too late. My hand had shot out and snatched the mask from the face of China's monarch. A moment I glared, the bit of black stuff in my grasp, at the alien countenance I had uncovered. Crowding and craning of the others to see. Jabbering, exclaiming all around us.

"Corking make-up; looks like a sure-enough Chinaman."

"No make-up at all. The real thing."

"What's the big idea?"

"Why did he unmask, then?"

"Didn't want to. They made him."

And last, but loudest, repeated time and again, with wonder, with distaste, with rising anger,

"The Vandeman's Chinese cook!"

For with the ripping away of that black oval, I had looked into the slant, inscrutable eyes of Fong Ling. Hemmed in by the crowd, he could but face me; he did so with a kind of unhuman passivity.

And the committee went wild. Their own masks came off on the run. I saw Cummings' face, Bowman's; Eddie Hughes slid from the balcony stair and bucked the crowd, pushing through to the seat of war. The grand march had become a jostling, gabbling chaos.

Barbara, up there, above it all, knew what she was about. I had utter confidence in her. But she was plainly holding back for a further development, her eyes on the entrances; and what the devil was my next move?

Ina Vandeman wheeled where she stood and faced the room, both hands thrown up, laughing.

"It was meant to be a joke – a great, big foolish joke!" her high treble rang out. "Bron's here somewhere. Wait. He'll tell you better than I could. At a masquerade – people do – they do foolish things… They – "

"Is Bronse Vandeman here?" I questioned Fong Ling. The Chinaman's stiff lips moved for the first time, in his formal, precise English.

"Yes, sir. Mr. Vandeman will explain." He crossed his hands and resigned the matter to his employer. And I demanded of Ina Vandeman, "You tell us your husband's present – in this room? Now?" and when her answer was drowned in the noise, I roared,

"Vandeman! Bronson Vandeman! You're wanted here!"

No answer. Edwards took up the call after me; the committee yelled the name in all keys and variations. In the middle of our squawking, a minor disturbance broke out across by the porch entrance, where Big Bill Capehart stood. As I looked, he turned over his post to Eddie Hughes, who came abreast of him at the moment, and started, scuffling and struggling toward us, with a captive.

"I had my orders!" his big voice boomed out. "Pinch any one that tried to get in. Y'don't pass me – not if you was own cousin to God A'mighty!"

On they came through the crowd, all mixed up; blue overalls, and a flapping costume whose rich, many-colored silk embroideries, flashed like jewels. A space widened about us for them. The big garage man spun his catch to the center of it, so that he faced the room, his back to the orchestra.

"Wanted in, did ya? Now yer in, what about it?"

What about it, indeed? In Bill's prisoner, as he stood there twitching ineffectually against that obstinate hold, breathing loud, shakily settling his clothes, we had, robe for robe, cap for cap, a duplicate Emperor of China!

And the next moment, this figure took off its mask and showed the face of Bronson Vandeman.

Dead silence all about us; Capehart loosened his grip, abashed but still truculent.

"Dang it all, Mr. Vandeman, if you didn't want to get mussed up, what made you fight like that?"

"Fight?" Vandeman found his voice. "Who wouldn't? I was late, and you – "

"Bron!" After one desperate glance toward the girl up on the platform, Ina ran to him and put a hand on his arm. "They stopped the march… Your – the – they spoiled our joke. But have them start the music again. You're here now. Let's go on with the march … explain afterward."

"Good business!" Vandeman filled his chest, glanced across at Fong Ling, and gave his social circle a rather poor version of the usual white-toothed smile. "Jokes can wait – especially busted ones. On with the dance; let joy be unrefined!"

Sidelong, I saw the orchestra leader's baton go up. But no music followed. It was at Barbara the baton had pointed, at Barbara that all the crowded company stared. Her little white dress clung to her slender figure. I saw that now she was in the strange Buddha pose. A few flecks of silver paper, still in her black hair, made it sparkle. But it was Barbara's eyes that held us all spellbound. In her colorless face those wonderful openings of black light seemed to look through and beyond us. For an instant there was no stir. Hundreds of faces set toward her, held by the wonder of her. Fong Ling's yellow visage moved for the first time from its immobility with a sort of awe, a dread. And when my gaze came back to her, I noticed that, with the dropping of her hands to join the finger-tips, she had left, where that little, pressing fist had been, a blur of red on the white sweater. Over me it rushed with the force of calamity, she had been wounded when she sank down back there in the crowd. It was a shot – not a giant cracker – we had heard.

"Vandeman," I whirled on him, "You shot this girl. You tried to kill her."

Sensation enough among the others; but I doubt if he even heard me. His gaze had found Barbara; all the bounce, all the jauntiness was out of the man, as he stared with the same haunted fear his eyes had held when she concentrated last night at his own dinner table.

She was concentrating now; could she stand the strain of it, with its weakening of the heart action, its pumping all the blood to the brain? I shouldered my way to her, and knelt beside her, begging,

"Don't, Barbara. Give it up, girl. You can't stand this."

Her hands unclasped. Her eyes grew normal. She relaxed, sighingly. I leaned closer while she whispered to me the last addition in that problem of two and two – the full solution. Armed, I faced Vandeman once more.

Something seemed to be giving way in the man; his lips were almost as pale as his face, and that had been, from the moment he uncovered it, like tallow. He looked withered, smaller; his hair where it had been pressed down by mask and cap, crossed his forehead, flat, smooth, dull brown. I saw, half consciously, that Fong Ling was gone. An accomplice? No matter; the criminal himself was here – Barbara's wonder man. It was to him I spoke.