elation, which he and Berne had observed at the close of the music-room
interview. Going to the window, he addressed the summer sky:

"Who the devil does the old fool suspect--Arthur or Berne?"

XIV

MR. CROWN FORMS AN ALLIANCE

"If you've as much as five hundred dollars at your disposal--pin-money
savings, perhaps--anything you can check on without the knowledge of
others, you can do it," Hastings urged, ending a long argument.

"I! Take it to her myself?" Lucille still protested, although she could
not refute his reasonings.

"It's the only way that would be effective--and it wouldn't be so
difficult. I had counted on your courage--your unusual courage."

"But what will it accomplish? If I could only see that, clearly!"

She was beginning to yield to his insistence.

They were in the rose garden, in the shade of a little arbor from whose
roof the great red flowers drooped almost to the girl's hair. He was
acutely aware of the pathetic contrast between her white, ravaged face
and the surrounding scene, the fragrance, the roses of every colour
swaying to the slow breeze of late afternoon, the long, cool shadows. He
found it hard to force her to the plan, and would have abandoned it but
for the possibilities it presented to his mind.

"I've already touched on that," he applied himself to her doubts. "I
want you to trust me there, to accept my solemn assurance that, if Mrs.
Brace accepts this money from you on our terms, it will hasten my
capture of the murderer. I'll say more than that: you are my only
possible help in the matter. Won't you believe me?"

She sat quite still, a long time, looking steadily at him with unseeing
eyes.

"I shall have to go to that dreadful woman's apartment, be alone with
her, make a secret bargain," she enumerated the various parts of her
task, wonder and repugnance mingling in her voice. "That horrible woman!
You say, yourself, Mr. Hastings, she's horrible."

"Still," he repeated, "you can do it."

A little while ago she had cried out, both hands clenched on the arm of
the rustic bench, her eyes opening wide in the startled look he had come
to know: "If I could do something, _anything_, for Berne! Dr. Welles
said only an hour ago he had no more than an even chance for his life.
Half the time he can't speak! And I'm responsible. I am! I know it. I
try to think I'm not. But I am!"

He recurred to that.

"Dr. Welles said the ending of Mr. Webster's suspense would be