all this time, and now it’s finished. I don’t know how you can be so damned cruel. Don’t you even want to see your own child? As for your husband—I have no more illusions about that. You’re sick of me. All you want is to get rid of me, and you don’t care how, either. Well, I don’t care. I’d be better off with a bullet through the head. It’s only the baby—

Here there were several words scratched out, and it began again:

CONTENTS

Darling, my own girl, perhaps I’m wrong. I hope to God I am. Perhaps you are really doing your best, and thinking of what’s best for the child. Only, it’s been so long. I want you back so. I’ve got a little money saved. I can keep you both. I can work. I can make you happy, even if we are a bit poor. Darling, just let me see you and—

That was the end. Ross touched his tongue to his dry lips, and folded up the letter again. He dared not look at Donnelly, but he knew Donnelly was looking at him.

“Ives wrote that letter,” said Donnelly. “The way I figure it out is this. He began to write, and then he decided that, instead of sending a letter, he’d go. He must have been in a pretty bad state to leave all that money behind. But, of course, he meant to come back. Well, he didn’t. Aha! Here we are!”

The taxi stopped before the gates of “Day’s End,” and Donnelly, getting out, told the driver to wait for him. Then he set off with Ross, not along the drive, but across the lawn, behind the fir trees.

“I won’t bother you by telling you how I know he came to Stamford on Tuesday,” he proceeded. “It’s my business to find out things like that. He came, and he took a taxi out to this cottage I’ve mentioned, and a woman met him there. He sent the taxi away—and that’s the last I’ve heard of him.”

The snow was wholly turned to rain, now; it blew against Ross’s face, cold and bitter; the trees stood dripping and shivering under the gray sky. He was wet, chilled to the bone, filled with a terrible foreboding.

“That cottage belongs to an old lady in the neighborhood,” said Donnelly. “But she doesn’t know anything about this. She said the place had been vacant two years, and she didn’t expect to rent it till she’d made some repairs. She said anybody could get into it easily enough if they should want to. Well!”

They stood before the garage, now, and Ross took the key from his pocket.

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