experience. It’s a great deal like a dream. There is something so absolutely lawless about it.”

[62]

“I can make neither head nor tail of it,” said Kenyon. “However, to tell the candid truth, I have examined but one side of the matter.”

“I understand,” said Webster, with a nod. “You’re confiding in an old pal, Ken, so don’t be backward. It’s the girl.” Kenyon was silent, so the young man from Chicago proceeded. “Of course it is. You have been kept so busy trying to free her of any possible blame that you have been unable to see anything else.”

“I think you are right,” replied the other, quietly. “She impressed me as being strangely out of place in such an atmosphere. There was courage and goodness and high purpose in her every look and movement.”

“Exactly.” Webster instantly dropped his bantering manner at Kenyon’s quiet, unembarrassed tone. His experience with the other told him that anything which his friend took seriously was not to be treated lightly. Throwing away his cigarette end, he lighted a fresh one. “I can’t think properly unless I’m continually firing up,” explained he.

He drew quickly and deeply, and the thick[63] blue smoke formed a veil between him and Kenyon. Then, waving it away with his hand, he proceeded:

[63]

“Now let us take this little affair from the very start. I suppose you have been doing that ever since it happened; but if we are to get at anything tangible in the way of a solution we must do it once more. Let me play the grand inquisitor; I probably see the entire adventure from a different angle than you, and will, perhaps, set your mind to working upon points that all but escaped you.”

“All right,” said Kenyon, lighting a cigarette also. “Go ahead, Garry; and I hope you make a better fist of it than I have.”

“Now, to start with: Did you get no whisper, in any way, of the name of the old man that died last night in Selden’s Square?”

“Not the faintest. Nor that of the girl I have specially spoken of. The other’s name was Anna. Then, of course, there was Forrester and Hong Yo.”

“But the old man knew Nunez, your old commander in Uruguay. There is a possible clue. Did you never hear Nunez speak of any friends who lived here in the North?”

“Never.”

 Prev. P 31/161 next