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Show UOWERfW MARY ROBERTA RINEHART AUTHOR f THE CIRCUIA14- STAmCA6"B ILLUSTRATIONS lv M.O.KJETTNBI CcnfRianT by BOBBS " MERRILL COMPANy I f-f-Jf V It 1 1 me. This arm of mine is only a fal. belief." I sat up gingerly. "Now-why "Now-why don't you open that -window?" Mrs. Klopton succumbed. "Because! there are queer goings-on in that house i next door," she said. "If you will take the beef tea, Mr. Lawrence, I will tell you." The queer goings-on, however, proved to be slightly disappointing. It seemed that after I left on Friday night, a light was seen flitting fitfully through the empty house next door. Euphemia had seen it first and called Mrs. Klopton. Together they had watched it breathlessly until it disappeared disap-peared on the lower floor. "You should have been a writer of ghost stories," I said, giving my pillows pil-lows a thump. "And so it was fitting fit-ting flitfully!" "That's what it was doing," she reiterated. re-iterated. Fitting flitfully I mean flit- ting fitfully how you do throw one out, Mr. Lawrence! And what's more,, it came again!" "Oh, come now, Mrs. Klopton," 1 objected, "ghosts are like lightning; they never strike twice in the same night. That is only worth half a cup of beef tea." "You may ask Euphemia," she retorted re-torted with dignity. "Not more than an hour after, there was a light there again. We saw it through the chinks of the shutters. Only this time it began be-gan at the lower floor and climbed!" , "You oughtn't to tell ghost stories at night," came-McKnight's voice from the doorway. "Really, Mrs. Klopton,. I'm amazed at you. You old duffer! I've got to thank you for the worst day of my life." Mrs. Klopton gulped. Then realizing realiz-ing that the "old duffer" was meant for me, she took her empty cup and went out muttering. "The Pirate's crazy ahout me, isn't; she?" McKnight said to the closing. SYNOPSIS. Lawrence Blakeley. lawyer, goes to Pittsburg with the forged notes in the Bronson case to get the deposition of John Gilmore. millionaire. In the latter 3 house he is attracted by the picture of a pi 1-1 whom Gilmore explains is his granddaughter, grand-daughter, Alison West. He says her father fa-ther is a rascal and a friend of the forger. forg-er. A lady requests Blakeley to buy her a Pullman ticket. He gives her lower eleven anil retains lower ten. He finds a man In a drunken stupor In lower ten and goes to bed in lower nine. He awakens awa-kens In lower seven and rinds that his hag and clothes are missing. The mri in lower ten is found murdered. His name, it develops, is Simon I lari'ington. The man who disappeared with lilake-ley's lilake-ley's clothes is suspected. Blakeley becomes be-comes interested in a girl in blue. .Circumstantial .Cir-cumstantial evidence places Blakeley under un-der suspicion of murder. The trin is wrecked. Elakeey Is rescued from the burning car by ti e girl in blue. His arm is broken. To-rether they go to the Carter Car-ter farm for breakfast. Tine girl proves to be Alison "West,, his partner's sweetheart. sweet-heart. CHAPTER X. Miss West's Request. The surprising charge in her held me speechless. All the animation of the breakfast table was gone; there was no hint of the response with which, before, she had met my nonsensical non-sensical sallies. She stood there, white-lipped, unsmiling, staring down the dusty road. One hand was clenched clench-ed tight over some small object. Her eyes , dropped to it from the distant road, and then closed, with a quick, indrawn breath. Her color came back slowly. Whatever What-ever had caused the change, she said nothing. She was anxious to leave at once, almost impatient over my deliberate de-liberate masculine way of getting my things together. Afterward I recalled that I had wanted to explore the barn for a horse and some sort of a vehicle ve-hicle to take us to the trolley, and that she had refused to allow me to look. I remembered many things later that might have helped me, and "I May Not Have Another Chance to Thank You." The steel finger of civilization, of propriety, pro-priety, of visiting cards and formal introductions in-troductions was beckoning us in. Miss TTT 4. 4- 1.... nViAn 1 am." I muttered something about the gratitude being mine. Owing to the knock I was seeing two cabs, and two e-irls were, holcline out two hands. did not. At the time, I was only completely com-pletely bewildered. Save the wreck, the responsibility for which lay between be-tween Providence and the engineer of the second section, all the evejits of that strange morning were logically connected; they .came" from one cause, and tended unerringly to one end. But the cause was buried, the end not yet in view. Not until we had left the house well behind did the girl's face relax its tense lines. I was watching her more closely than I had realized, for when we had gone a little way along the road she turned to me almost petulantly. pet-ulantly. "Please don't stare so at me," she said, to my sudden confusion. "I know the hat is dreadful. Green always al-ways makes me look ghastly." "Perhaps it was the green." I was unaccountably relieved. "Do you know, a few minutes ago, you looked almost pallid to me!" She glanced at me quickly, but I was gazing ahead. We were out of sight of the house, now, and With every step away from it the girl was We said little on the car. The few passengers stared at us frankly, and discussed the wreck, emphasizing its horrors. The girl did not seem to hear. Once she turned to me with the quick, unexpected movement that was one of her. charms. "I do not wish my mother to know I was in the accident." she said. "Will you please not tell Richey about having hav-ing met me?" I gave my. promise, of course. Again, when we were almost into Baltimore, she asked to examine the gun-metal cigarette case, and sat silent with it in her hands, while I told of the early morning's events on the Ontario. "So you see," I finished, "this grip, everything I have on, belongs to a fellow fel-low named Sullivan. He probably left the train before the wreck perhaps just' after the murder." "And so you think he committed the the crime?" Her eyes were on the cigarette case. "Naturally," I said. "A man doesn't jump off a Pullman car in the middle of the night in another man's clothes, "Remember," they were hoth saying, say-ing, "you have never met me, Mr. Blakeley. And if you ever hear anything any-thing about me that is not pleasant, I want you to think the best you can of me. Will you?" The two girls were ' one now, with little flashes of white light playing all around. "I I'm afraid that I shall think too well for my own good," I said unsteadily. And the cab drove on. CHAPTER XI. The Name of Sullivan. I had my arm done up temporarily in Baltimore and took the next train home. I was pretty far gone when I stumbled out of a cab almost into the scandalized arms of Mrs. Klopton. In 15 minutes I was in bed, with that good woman piling on blankets and blistering me in unprotected' places with hot-water bottles. And in an hour I had had a whiff of chloroform j and Dr. Williams had set the broken I bone. door. Then he swung around and held out his hand. "By Jove," he said, "I've been laying lay-ing you out all day, lilies on the doorbell, door-bell, black gloves, everything. If you-had you-had had the sense of a mosquito in a snowstorm, you would have telephoned, me" "I never even thought of it." I was filled with remorse. "Upon my word, Rich, I hadn't an idea beyond getting away from that place. If. you had , , seen what I saw " McKnight stopped me. "Seen it! Why, you lunatic, I've been digging' for you all day in the ruins. I've lunched and dined on horrors. Give me something to rinse them down, Lollie." He had fished the key of the eel-larette eel-larette from its hiding place in my shoe bag and was mixing himself what he called a Bernard Shaw a foundation founda-tion of brandy and soda, with a little of everything else in sight to give it snap. Now that I saw him clearly, he looked weary and grimy. I hated to tell him what I knew he was waiting- to hear, but there was no use wading in by inches. I ducked and got it over. "The notes are gone. Rich," I said, as quietly as I could. In spite of himself him-self his face fell. "I of course I expected it," he said. "But Mrs. Klopton said over uuviuusiy lenevcu. v uciievei sue neiu in her hand, she never glanced at it. But she was conscious of it every second. sec-ond. She seemed to come to a decision de-cision about it while we were still in sight of the gate, for she murmured something and turned back alone, going go-ing swiftly, her feet stirring up small puffs of dust at every step. She fastened fas-tened something to the gate post I could see the nervous haste with which she worked. When she joined me again it was without explanation. But the clenched fingers were free now, and while she looked tired and worn, the strain had visibly relaxed. We walked along slowly in the general gen-eral direction of the suburban trolley line. Once a man with an empty wagon offered us a lift, but after a glance at the springless vehicle I declined. de-clined. "The ends of the bone think they are castanets as it is," I explained. "But the lady" The young lady, however, declined and we went on together. Once, when the trolley line was in sight, she got a pebble in her low shoe, and we sat down under a tree until she found the cause of the trouble. "I I don't know what I should have J ...:n t, T V.lT.,.n unless he is trying to get away from something. Besides the dirk, there were the stains that you saw. Why, I have the murdered man's pocket-book pocket-book in this valise at my feet. What dees that look like?" I co'ored when I saw the ghost of a smile hovering around the corners of her mouth. "That is," I finished, "if you care to believe that I am innocent." in-nocent." The sustaining chain of her small gold bag gave way just then. She did not notice it. I picked it up and slid the trinket into my pocket for safekeeping, safe-keeping, where I promptly forgot it. Afterwards I wished I had let it lie unnoticed un-noticed on the floor of that dirty little suburban car, and -even now, when I see a woman carelessly dangling a similar feminine trinket, I shudder involuntarily; in-voluntarily; there comes back to me the memory of a girl's puzzled eyes under the brim of a flopping hat, the haunting suspicion of the sleepless nights that followed. Just then I was determined that my companion should not stray back to the wreck, and to that end I was determinedly facetious. "Do you know that it is Sunday?" she asked suddenly, "and that we are i aroppea asteep lueu, waning m the late twilight to a realization that I was at home again, without the papers pa-pers that meant conviction for Andy Bronson, with a charge of murder hanging over my head, and with something some-thing more than an impression of the girl my best friend was in love with, a girl moreover who was almost as great an enigma as the crime itself. "And I'm no hand at guessing riddles," rid-dles," I groaned half aloud. Mrs. Klopton came over-vpromptly and put a cold cloth on my forehead. "Euphemia," she said to some one outside the door, "telephone the doctor doc-tor that he is still rambling, but that he has switched from green ribbons to riddles." , "There's nothing the matter with me. Mrs. Klopton," I rebelled. "I was only thinking out loud. Confound that cloth; it's trickling all over me!" I gave it a fling, and heard it land with a soggy thud on the floor. "Thinking out loud is delirium," Mrs. Klopton said imperturbably. "A fresh cloth, Euphemia." This time she held it on with a firm pressure that I was too weak to resist. re-sist. I expostulated feebly that I was drowning, which she also laid to my rnc.nt-.il ovnltitifiTl n n rl tllPTl T filinllV ,1 X j "The Notes Are Gone, Rich." the telephone that you had brought home a grip and I hoped well, Lord knows we ought not to complain. You're here, damaged, but here." He lifted his glass. "Happy days, old man!" "If you will give me that black bottle bot-tle and teaspoon, I'll drink that in arnica, or whatever the stuff is;. Rich the notes were gone before the wreck!" He wheeled and stared at me, the bottle in his hand. "Lost, strayed or ' stolen?" he queried with forced lightness. light-ness. "Sto'en, although I believe the theft was incidental to something else." Mrs. Klopton came in at that moment, mo-ment, with an egg-nog in her hand. She glanced at the clock, and, without with-out addressing any one in particular, she intimated that it was time for self-respecting self-respecting folks to bet at homo In bed. McKnight, who could never resist a fling at her back, spoke to me in a-stage a-stage whisper. (TO BE CONTINUED.) UClllC WL11UUL JCIU, L U-U no i u . "Moral support and ard vl that. Do you know, my first con ;ious thought after the wreck was of relief that you had not been hurt?" She was sitting beside me where a big chestnut tree shaded the road, and I surprised a look of misery on her face that certainly my words had not i been meant to produce. "And my first thought," she said slowly, "was regret that I that I hadn't been obliterated, blown out liKe a candle. Please don't look like that! am only talking." But her lips were trembling, and because be-cause the little shams of society are "orgotten at times like this, I leaned over and patted her hand lightly, wheic it rested on the grass beside me. "You must not say those things," I expostulated. "Perhaps, after all, your friends " "I had no friends on the train," Her voice was hard again, her tone "mal. She drew her hand from under nine, not quickly, but decisively. A a- was in sight, coming toward u?. "Never mind that," I retorted. "All Baltimore is divided on Sunday into three parts, those who rise and go to church, those who rise up and read the newspapers, and those who don't rise up. The first are somewhere between be-tween the creed and the sermon, and we need not worry about the other:.." "You treat me like a child," she said almost pettishly. "Don't try so hard to be cheerful. It it is almost ghastly ghast-ly " After that I subsided like a pricked balloon, and the remainder of the ride was made in silence. The information that she would go to friends in the city was a shock; it meant an earlier separation than I had planned for. But my arm was beginning again. In putting her into a cab I struck it and gritted my teeth with the pain. It was probab'y for that reason that I forgot the gold bag! She leaned forward and held out her hand. "I may not have another chance to thank you," she said, "and I think I would better not try, anyhow. any-how. I cannot tell you how grateful dropped into a damp sleep. It was probably midnight when I roused again. I had been dreaming of the wreck, and it was inexpressibly comforting com-forting to feel the stability of my bed, r.ncl to realize the equal stability of Mrs. Klopton. who sat, fully attired, by the night light, reading Science and Health. "Does that book say anything about opening the windows on a hot night?" I suggested, when I had got my bearings. bear-ings. She put it down immediately and came over to me. If there is one time when Mrs. Klopton is chastened and it is the only one it is when she reads Science and Health. "I don't like to open the shutters, Mr. Lawrence," she explained. "Not since the night you went away." But, pressed further, she refused to explain. "The doctor said you were not to be excited," she persisted. "Here's your beef tea." "Not a drop until you tell me," I said grimly. "Besides, you know very well there's nothing the matter with |