He had expected his conveyance to be almost as close and stifling as a tomb, but was relieved to find that sufficient air came in through the crack of the door to make the trip endurable. The only provident thing that he had done during the whole adventure, he decided, was to put on his overcoat and hat before leaving the den. One journey bareheaded into the November night had been sufficient to warn him against a repetition of such rashness. He was dressed now as he had been when he first took stock of himself outside the tall iron gate.

The road was smooth asphalt all of the way, and the passenger, stretched at full length on the hard floor of the hearse, felt more comfortable than he had all that ghastly day. During the ride he tried to formulate some definite course of action. For now that the solitary desolation of the last twenty-four hours was ended, he was able to detach himself from its events and to view the whole experience as a spectator.

His vivid imagination pictured the somber house in a dozen different lights. But he discarded them one by one, and his interest centered about the identity of the woman upstairs and the single shot which had pierced the stillness of a few hours before. Of only one thing he was certain—that he was going to get out of Mont-Mer as speedily as possible. It was all very well to conjecture that the house might be the disreputable retreat of some Eastern capitalist, or a rendezvous for radicals, but he preferred to solve the riddle from a distance. He had no intention of being called as a witness in an ugly exposé. It would be easy enough to write to Old Man Raeburn and explain that it hadn't been possible for him to stop off on his way to San Francisco. He fervently hoped that he would never see Mont-Mer again. Without ever having really seen it he had come to loathe it.

He had ridden for twenty minutes or more when he felt the vehicle slow down. It made a sharp turn and came to a stop. Kenwick wondered if the driver would open the doors, and he lay there waiting, staring into the dark, impassive in the hands of fate. He heard the man climb down from his seat and then the sound of his footsteps growing fainter in the distance.

Ten minutes later Kenwick cautiously pushed open the flimsy doors and worked himself out of his hiding-place. He was in an alley enclosed on three sides by the backs of buildings. Half hopping, half crawling he reached the dimly lighted street. It was almost midnight now and the little town was deserted. At the corner he found a drug-store. It looked warm, companionable, inviting. Drawing his 

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