y. "I'll be glad
to help--if you think I can."

"What good's that to me?" He wore his best politician's smile, but there
was resentment in his voice. "Your job is keeping things quiet--for
Sloanehurst. Mr. Sloane's ill, too ill to see me without endangering his
life, so his funeral-faced valet tells me. Miss Lucille says, politely
enough, she's told all she knows, told it on the stand, and I'm to go to
you if I want anything more from her. The judge here knows nothing about
the inside relationships of the family and Webster, or of Webster and
the Brace girl. And Webster's down and out, thoroughly and
conveniently! If all that don't catch your uncle Robert where the hair's
short, I'll quit!"

"What do you want to know?" Hastings countered. "You've had access to
everything, far as I can see."

Reply to that was delayed by the appearance of Jarvis, summoning the
judge to Arthur Sloane's room.

"I want to get at Webster," Crown told Hastings. "And here's why: if
Russell didn't kill her, Webster did."

"Why, you've weakened!" the old man guyed head bent over his whittling.
"You had Russell's goose cooked this morning--roasted to a rich, dark
brown!"

"Yes; and if I could break down his alibi, I'd still have him cooked!"

"You accept the alibi, then?"

"Sure, I accept it."

"I don't."

"Why don't you?" objected Crown. "He didn't have an aeroplane in his hip
pocket, did he? That's the only way he could have covered those four
miles in fifteen minutes.--Or does his alibi have to fall in order to
save Miss Sloane's fiance?"

He slapped his thigh and thrust out his bristly moustache. "You're paid
to fasten the thing on Russell," he said, clearly pugnacious. "I don't
expect you to help me work against Webster! I'm not that simple!"

The old man, with a gesture no more arresting than to point at the
sheriff with the piece of wood in his left hand, made the official jaw
drop almost to the official chest.

"Mr. Crown," he said, "get this, once and for all: a man ain't
necessarily a crook because he's once worked for the government. I'm as
anxious to find the guilty man now, every time, as when I was in the
Department of Justice. And I intend to. From now on, you'll give me
credit for that!--Won't you, Mr. Sheriff?"

Crown apologized. "I'm worried; that's what. I'm up a gum stump and
can't get down."

"All right, but don't try to make a ladder out of me! Why don't you look
into that alibi?"

Crown was irritated