em. Manuel's woman knows who struck
that blow, and Sanderson was trying to bribe her to tell."

If the announcement had been an explosion to rock the bungalow on its
foundations, the effect could scarcely have been more striking. Ballard
flung the empty gun aside and sprang to his feet. The collegian sat down
weakly and stared. Bromley's jaw dropped, and he glared across at
Wingfield as if the clever deduction were a mortal affront to be crammed
down the throat of its originator.

The playwright's smile was the eye-wrinkling of one who prides himself
upon the ability to keep his head when others are panic-stricken.

"Seems to knock you fellows all in a heap," he remarked, calmly. "What
have you been doing all these months that you haven't dug it out for
yourselves?"

Bromley was moistening his lips.

"Go on, Mr. Wingfield, if you please. Tell us all you know--or think you
know."

"There is more; a good bit more," was the cool reply. "Three months ago
you had a train wreck on the railroad--two men killed. 'Rough track,'
was the cause assigned, Mr. Bromley; but that was one time when your
cautious chief, Macpherson, fell down. The two surviving trainmen,
questioned separately by me within the past week, both say that there
were at least inferential proofs of pulled spikes and a loosened rail. A
little later one man was killed and two were crippled by the premature
explosion of a charge of dynamite in the quarry. Carelessness, this
time, on the part of the men involved; and _you_ said it, Mr. Bromley.
It was nothing of the kind. Some one had substituted a coil of
quick-firing fuse for the ordinary slow-match the men had been using,
and the thing went off before the cry of 'fire' could be given. How do I
know?"

"Yes; how _do_ you know?" demanded Bromley.

"By a mere fluke, and not by any process of deduction, in this instance,
as it happens. One of the survivors was crafty enough to steal the coil
of substituted fuse, having some vague notion of suing the company for
damages for supplying poor material. Like other men of his class, he
gave up the notion when he got well of his injuries; but it was revived
again the other day when one of his comrades told him I was a lawyer. He
made a date with me, told me his tale, and showed me the carefully
preserved coil of bad fuse. I cut off a bit of it and did a little
experimenting. Look at this." He took a piece of fuse from his pocket,
uncoiled it upon the table, and app