toward the bottom of the sheet were much better than the top ones. Mr. Jamieson smiled at my face. 

 “His old tricks,” he said. “That one is merely curious; this one, as I said before, is puzzling.” 

 The second scrap, folded and refolded into a compass so tiny that the writing had been partly obliterated, was part of a letter—the lower half of a sheet, not typed, but written in a cramped hand. 

 “——by altering the plans for——rooms, may be possible. The best way, in my opinion, would be to——the plan for——in one of the——rooms——chimney.” 

 That was all. 

 “Well?” I said, looking up. “There is nothing in that, is there? A man ought to be able to change the plan of his house without becoming an object of suspicion.” 

 “There is little in the paper itself,” he admitted; “but why should Arnold Armstrong carry that around, unless it meant something? He never built a house, you may be sure of that. If it is this house, it may mean anything, from a secret room—” 

 “To an extra bath-room,” I said scornfully. “Haven’t you a thumb-print, too?” 

 “I have,” he said with a smile, “and the print of a foot in a tulip bed, and a number of other things. The oddest part is, Miss Innes, that the thumb-mark is probably yours and the footprint certainly.” 

 His audacity was the only thing that saved me: his amused smile put me on my mettle, and I ripped out a perfectly good scallop before I answered. 

 “Why did I step into the tulip bed?” I asked with interest. 

 “You picked up something,” he said good-humoredly, “which you are going to tell me about later.” 

 “Am I, indeed?” I was politely curious. “With this remarkable insight of yours, I wish you would tell me where I shall find my four-thousand-dollar motor car.” 

 “I was just coming to that,” he said. “You will find it about thirty miles away, at Andrews Station, in a blacksmith shop, where it is being repaired.” 

 I laid down my knitting then and looked at him. 

 “And Halsey?” I managed to say. 

 “We are going to exchange information,” he said “I am going to tell you that, when you tell me what you 

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