eturning with your aid, on the
little elevator, I threw myself back into the original pose on the
big couch. It was just in time, for Warren returned. His cook came in
shortly afterward. I imagine that he allows no one in that apartment,
ordinarily, when he is not there himself. But what, sir, do you think I
discovered upon the shoulder of his coat?"

Shirley shook his head. "A beautiful crimson hair," he asked gravely,
"from the sun-kissed forehead of the delectable Pinkie? Or was it white,
from the tail of the snowy charger which tradition informs us always
lurks in the vicinity of auburn-haired enchantresses?"

"Nothing so romantic. Just cobwebs! He saw me looking at them, and
brushed them off very quickly."

"The man thinks he is a wine bottle of rare vintage!" observed Shirley.
But the jest was only in his words. He looked at her seriously and
then rapt in thought, closed his eyes the better to aid his mental
calculation. "He got off at the second floor--He wore no overcoat--A
black silk handkerchief--cobwebs--and that garage on the other street,
through the block! Miss Helene, you are a splendid ally!"

"Won't you tell me what you mean about the garage? Who were those men
who attacked you? What happened since I deserted you?"

But Shirley provokingly shook his head, as he drew out his watch.

"It is half-past two. I must hurry down to East Twenty-fifth Street and
the East River, at the yacht club mooring, before three. Tomorrow I will
give you my version in some quiet restaurant, far from the gadding crowd
of the White Light district."

He rose, drawing back his chair; they walked to the elevator together.
The clerk beckoned politely.

"A gent named Mr. Warren telephoned to ask if you were home yet, Miss
Marigold. I told him not yet. Was that wrong?"

"It was very kind of you. Thank you so much," and Helene's smile was
the cause of an uneasy flutter in the breast of the blase clerk.
"Good-night."

"That's a lucky guy, at that, Jimmie," confided the clerk to the
bell-boy. "She is some beauty show, ain't she? And she's on the right
track, too."

"Yep, but she's too polite to be a great actress or a star. Her
temper'ment ain't mean enough!" responded this Solomon in brass buttons.
"I hopes we gits invited to the wedding!"

Outside, Shirley enjoyed the stimulus of the bracing early morning air.
A new inspiration seemed to fire him, altogether dissimilar to the glow
which he was wont to feel when plungin