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Show .has written many books of life afield, and a man extraordinarily I fond of his wife and home. And, heavens! there was myself my-self beside Dwight, my own inconsequential incon-sequential physiognomy. I blushed as I stood there on the sidewalk oblivious to the afternoon crowd, that swarmed along the boule vard. Was I such a villain as uidi Was I so old? And, heavens again! Beside me in the window, overwhelmingly so huge and coarse that at firgt I had not seen it, was Jimmy the In other shop windows up the 'boulevard that mild April after- nuuii x encountered still caricatures by the same 1" hand. There was one of h e Rogers ludicrous in the p-Z'- the thinning hair on top Z ' head was all but gone- h j stood out like flapping Zl ea, J his nose was twice its ,ar': generous size. mM black mMimM SOMBREROpO YM&iwcurFonD knight - .. i L ! M - Ma ft Mld sea, 'she was forty years and ten months old." "But Elsa " I began. "I am coming to her. We are always getting back to Elsa. There was new blood with Elsa's mother. It was an alien strain to the Chatfields new and fresh and vigorous, like a clear mountain moun-tain stream flowing into a sluggish slug-gish river. Sam Chatfield married his stenographer. That sort of thing is heroic. It does violence to family traditions; it puts a terrific ter-rific strain on family pride, but biologically it is -a good thing, provided it doesn't become a habit. hab-it. Sam didn't reason things out quite like that. He loved the girl, which is much simpler ,and so he married her. He was young. CHAPTER HI "But Kitty talked. Lord, how she talked! Sam, thank God, was a human sort, however; he just laughed at her and went on loving his wife. And then Elsa's mother, to Kitty's great relief, passed from the scene. Pneumonia, I think, although it's hard to remember re-member everything. Sam didn't remarry, however, until after he set himself up again in Mexico; and then it was to Berta, the CHAPTER n-B I pulled Into a parking lot at a refitaunint on Vine street. I was hungry. The excitement of getting get-ting a woman off on a long journey jour-ney is fatiguing. Reed P.arton said lie wann't really hungry, but he went in with me. "Hello," called a voice from a liool.h. Huntoon Rogers was sitting alone over the dessert of a late dinner. "Nut brooding, are you, Hunt?" I inquired lightly, for there was h glumness about him. I introduced intro-duced Reed Barton. "No-o," he said hesitatingly. "Kit down and let me enjoy your company." "What's the trouble?" "Theme papers," he said with a wry smile. "They get me down sometimes and I'm driven to extremes. ex-tremes. Therefore, I spent the afternoon af-ternoon looking over the files in the Katherino Chatfield case." Reed Burton nlyt a quick glance at Rogers but said nothing. "Find anything to interest you?" "Yes. And no. It's one of those cases you keep coming back to, wondering what the answer is." Reed Barton ate mechanically, t gate. That was several hours afterward. af-terward. No one else smelled it, however. It might have been an overactive odor of it noted in the autopsy leport. But chloroform is peculiar in that respect; the odor is not necessarily present, even at autopsy in a death from chloroform." chloro-form." 'Yes, of course," I said. "You're not by any chance j thinking that Katherine Chatfield was murdered, Professor Rogers?" Rog-ers?" inquired Reed Barton . Rogers smiled faintly. "I have no opinion, Mr. Barton. The case has been closed for over a year now. Who am I to stir it up at this time? The police were satisfied satis-fied that it was suicide; there were no fingerprints, except her own, on the hypodermic syringe she used, or on the bottle in which she kept her supply." "I guess I was the last one to see her alive," said Reed Barton after a short silence, looking beyond be-yond Rogers to a group making merry in an opposite booth. "I've since been glad it wasn't murder. The police might have made it uncomfortable for me; they could have saddled a motive on me that I couldn't have denied. Because "Look t that! Look at that! " not endear her to Aunt Kitty. Toward To-ward the last as bitter a hatred existed between those two as you could well imagine. Elsa of course was not to blame for it. Kitty Chatfield was older, her neck was stiff." "There was the baby." "Who was the child's father?" inquired Rogers. "That has never been disclosed." disclos-ed." A boy came out upon the veranda veran-da to inform us that Margaret and the others had arrived. Dwight Nichols has a kindly face. He is not yet forty but his Is the face . of a benevolent philosopher. philos-opher. His brown eyes are benign, soft, almost feminine in their compassion for his fellow man. There is a quiet, gentle smile constantly con-stantly about his lips; his whole countenance, in fact, is lovable and sweet. His is a face widely known, for it has been seen often in the press a face of .charm, inviting to confidence, winning, friendly. That's why the devilish caricature carica-ture in the shop window struck so forcibly upon my attention. It was the eye that did the trick; th caricaturist had provided him with an eye cunning, sly, wicked. It made over the whole counte-, nance of Dwight Nichols; it made ' a rascal of him, whereas he is an upright man, a sportsman who Kathrine Chatfield killed my father fath-er just as much as if she had pulled a trigger. Things were looking look-ing up, you know. Father had struggled all through the worst of the depression to keep things together; to-gether; he'd managed somehow to make the interest payments to her. She held a mortgage, you know, on all he had. Even as little lit-tle as a two months' extension would have seen him out of the woods. But you know, there's no Shylock like a woman Shylock her pound of flesh must come from the heart. And so," he shrugged his shoulders, "father jumped." He went on after a moment mo-ment : "The police could have said I hated her. But I don't think they did. Reed Barton didnt' want any more to eat. He looked now at the empty dishes before him in some bewilderment, scarcely realizing that he had eaten at all. Huntoon Rogers offered his cirarettes and like a man in a mild trance. "Rued was telling me about Elsa El-sa Chatfield as we drove out from town," I said to Rogers. "You know her, Professor Rogers?" Rog-ers?" Reed inquired quickly. "I've met her." "Interesting, isn't she?" He sketched briefly what he had told me on tho way out. "You know," he concluded, 'even when they clutch economic independence to their blessed little bosoms they haven't got all there is in life. Not even half. They've only got the beginning." At the time it didn't occur to mo that Reed Barton had never heard of the baby. I supposed, of course, he had, for he knew Elsa's friends. But it was revealed subsequently sub-sequently that, during the height of tho gossip, he was in Mexico. The conversation came back to Aunt Kitty Chatfild. Rogers asked if there had been any physical resemblance re-semblance between Elsa and her aunt. Mexican. Berta was the last straw to Kitty Chatfield. Berta, of course, is all right, I like her." "It's time Margaret was getting here. Sam Chatfield and his Mexican Mexi-can wife are coming too. They're up from Mazatlan for a few days," he said. "I'm hungry. How about you?" "I could eat now," Huntoon Rogers said. "Perhaps it is clearer now about the will, Barry," said Dwight, settling set-tling back in hie chair once more. "When Aunt Kitty cut her niece off with only a year's income from the estate, knowing quite well that Elsa would spend all of it which she did it was a deliberate delib-erate thrust at the vital spot, so she thought. "Aunt Kitty never looked upon Elsa as a Chatfield. Elsa resembled resem-bled her mother. What's more to the point she was not awed by the antiquity of the Chatfields; she refused to kowtow to the great god family. Which of course did. lighted one himself. There was no comment on what Reed had said other than Rogers' remark: 'I'm sorry. Perhaps I shouldn't have brought up the subject." "Oh, not at all, Professor. I don't mind in the least." Dwight Nichols tapped the ash from his cigarette and looked away through the gathering dusk across the vast Pacific into which the sun's dark red ball had sunk. The air was humid; small waves lapped wetly on the damp sand. Indeed so all-pervading was the feeling of wetness that I fancied I could push off from the -veranda rail of the beach club, where we sat, and swim out across the lawn. Two screaming children had been engaged in a feud on the beach and the mother with difficulty diffi-culty was now bringing them toward the club house. Dwight seemed more interested in them at the moment than in my remark about Kitty Chatfield for he drew twice on his cigarette before he replied : "Oh, I should say that Katherine Kather-ine Chatfield might have been 41 or two when she died. She was not old." "According to the files," Huntoon Hun-toon Rogers said, coming to life after long contemplation of the "N one whatever," answered Reed Barton. "That is, as I remember re-member Katherine Chatfield. I never saw the two side by side, however. As a matter of fact, I had never met Elsa until today. She must have been at home that night her aunt died for I remember remem-ber that the maid asked me which Miss Chatfield I wished to see." 'You were there that night?" inquired Rogers, his mild blue eyes coming to rest upon Reed Barton's face. "Y'es. You see, I'm one of Chese-bro's Chese-bro's slaves. At times only his errand er-rand boy, . although I'm supposed to be something of a mining engineer. engi-neer. But I am required to run a great many personal errands for Cheesebro. I think I took Miss Chatfield a book something that had interested Cheesebro, and which he wanted her to read too." "I see," said Rogers. "And she died that night?" "Y'es. She killed herself some time that night." Rogers was silent for a moment then he looked at me. "There's a chap from the police department in Pasadena whose report interested inter-ested me, Madison. He says that he smelled chloroform faintly as he went into the room to investi- |