ull affair. Will be back later.

"Yours--

"B. A. CLYMER."

Kent judged from the use of his initials that Clymer was stirred out of
his ordinary calm, nothing else explained his failure to sign his full
name, and he wondered what confidences McIntyre had made to the bank
president.

Tossing down the note, Kent lighted his pipe, tilted back in his swivel
chair, and reviewed the facts which implicated Rochester in Jimmie
Turnbull's murder. Rochester's quarrels with Jimmie, his persistent
assertion that his friend had died from angina pectoris, his unexplained
disappearance on Tuesday night, the fake telegram from Cleveland stating
he was there, the withdrawal of his bank deposits, the forged checks,
his mysterious visits to his own apartment, when considered together,
presented a chain of circumstantial evidence connecting him with the
crime. But in the light of Dr. Stone's testimony, the poison "could not
have been administered in the glass of water Rochester had given Jimmie
in the police court."

Four hours at least had to elapse before the fatal dose of aconitine
could take effect--four hours! Kent told them off on his fingers;
it placed the crime in the McIntyre house. Which one of its inmates
administered the poison to Jimmie and how had it been done? What motive
had prompted the cashier's murder?

It was preposterous to think that either of the twins was guilty of the
crime. Helen's devotion to Jimmie, her insistence upon an autopsy being
held indicated her innocence. She had stated at the inquest that she had
not known the burglar's identity; Kent paused as the thought occurred
to him--the twins had swapped identities on the witness stand, and
therefore Helen had not been called upon to answer that question! To the
best of his recollection she had only been asked if she had recognized
Jimmie in the court room and not at her home. But Helen it was who had
summoned Officer O'Ryan on discovering the burglar and had him arrested.
She surely would never have done so had she guessed his identity.

As for Barbara McIntyre--Kent's heart beat faster at thought of the
girl he loved so well. Circumstantial evidence had seemed for a time
to involve her in the crime. Grimes' outrageous insinuation that he had
been assaulted on account of confiding to her that the box of aconitine
pills had been left on the hall table where any one could get them, was
the outcome of his battered condition. When physical strength retur