a fancy to him. Why?”      

       “I am looking at him now.”      

       “Very likely. He’s deep in this affair. Just an everyday detective, but ambitious, I suppose, and quite alive to the importance of being thorough.”      

       “He is watching those people. No, he isn’t. How quickly he disappeared!”      

       “Yes, he’s mercurial in all his movements. Laura, we must get out of this. There happens to be something else in the world for me to do than to sit around and follow up murder clews.”      

       But we began to doubt if others agreed with him, when on passing out we were stopped in the lobby by this same detective, who had something to say to George, and drew him quickly aside.     

       “What does he want?” I asked, as soon as George had returned to my side.     

       “He wants me to stand ready to obey any summons the police may send me.”      

       “Then they still suspect Brotherson?”      

       “They must.”      

       My head rose a trifle as I glanced up at George.     

       “Then we are not altogether out of it?” I emphasised, complacently.     

       He smiled which hardly seemed apropos. Why does George sometimes smile when I am in my most serious moods.     

       As we stepped out of the hotel, George gave my arm a quiet pinch which served to direct my attention to an elderly gentleman who, was just alighting from a taxicab at the kerb. He moved heavily and with some appearance of pain, but from the crowd collected on the sidewalk many of whom nudged each other as he passed, he was evidently a person of some importance, and as he disappeared within the hotel entrance, I asked George who this kind-faced, bright-eyed old gentleman could be.     

       He appeared to know, for he told me at once that he was Detective Gryce; a man who had grown old in solving just such baffling problems as these.     

       “He gave up work some time ago, I have been told,” my husband went on;       “but evidently a great case still has 

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