three, your friends, upon whom you fixed this crime, give him over to
the gallows?"

"I refuse to answer," I said.

"But you would do it!" Van Bult asserted, and I did not dispute him.

"I am going home," Davis broke in. "I have had enough of this; you
fellows can go on hanging one another all night, if you choose, but I
won't have a hand in it," and he pushed his chair back from the table.

The laugh that followed relieved the tension, and we prepared to break
up.

"Let us have a last drink together before we go out," Littell said, and
following his example, we all rose and filled our glasses.

"The toast?" Van Bult asked.

"Failure to Dallas," said Littell, and I could not refuse to join them.

To change the tenor of our thoughts, I asked Littell if he had
definitely decided about his trip.

"Yes," he replied, "I shall go to Florida, to-morrow, but will be back
in time to receive any revelations you may have to make."

"Better take him with you," said Davis. "He is hardly good company, but
it will keep him out of harm."

"Why not go?" Van Bult urged. "It will do you good--you need rest even
more than Littell."

"No," I said, "I will stay here."

By this time we had reached the front door and no one seemed disposed to
linger. Though our little dinner had begun auspiciously and full of
promise of a pleasant evening, its ending had been rather melancholy and
I knew they all felt so and, try as they would, could not throw the
weight off. Somehow or other, this death of White seemed fated to bring
us all constant trouble.

Davis and Van Bult nodded me a farewell as they went away, but Littell
held out his hand and, as I took it, said earnestly, almost
affectionately:

"Your fidelity to your purpose may prove to your sorrow, Dick, but I
respect you for it, and I wish some of us could be more like you."

"It is you that I would be like," I answered him.

"Good-night," he said, and joined the others as they crossed the square.

As I stood for a moment, looking after their retreating forms, I saw
again the detective I had seen shadowing Winters the day I had met him
by White's house.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TRUTH AT LAST

It was nearly two weeks after my little dinner that I sat late one
afternoon alone in my office. The rain without pattered dismally against
the single window that looked into a deserted court and within the room
was dimly lighted by the fading daylight and the fire that flickered