en, did Eugene Russell keep black, Hub Hill mud on
his shoes that night if he went the four miles on foot to where Otis
picked him up?"

"Eh?" said Crown, chin fallen.

"By the time he'd run four miles, his shoes would have been covered with
the red mud of that mile of 'dirt road' or the thin, grey mud of the
three miles of pike--wouldn't they? They'd have thrown off that Hub Hill
mud pretty quick, wouldn't they?"

"Thunder!" marvelled Crown. "That's right! And those shoes were in his
room; I saw 'em." He gurgled, far back in his throat. "Say! How did he
get from Hub Hill to where Otis picked him up?"

"That's what I say," declared Hastings, very bland. "How?"

To Lucille, after Crown's departure, the detective declared his
intention to "stand by" her, to stay on the case. He repeated his
statement of yesterday: he suspected too much, and knew too little, to
give it up.

He told her of the responsibility he had assumed in giving the sheriff
the fictitious Sloane statement. "That is, it's not fictitious, in
itself; it's what your father has been saying. But I told Crown, and I'm
going to tell the newspaper men, that he says it's all he knows, really.
And I hate to do it--because, honestly, Miss Sloane, I don't think it
is all. I'm afraid he's deceiving us."

She did not contradict that; it was her own opinion.

"However," the old man made excuse, "I had to do it--in view of things
as they are. And he's got to stick to it, now that I've made it
'official,' so to speak. Do you think he will?"

She did not see why not. She would explain to him the importance, the
necessity, of that course.

"He's so mistaken in what he's doing!" she said. "I don't understand
him--really. You know how devoted to me he is. He called me into his
room again an hour or two ago and tried to comfort me. He said he had
reason to know everything would come out as it should. But he looked
so--so uncertain!--Oh, Mr. Hastings, who did kill that woman?"

"I think I'll be able to prove who did it--let's see," he spoke with a
light cheerfulness, and at the same time with sincerity; "I'll be able
to prove it in less than a week after Mrs. Brace takes that money from
you."

She said nothing to that, and he leaned forward sharply, peering at her
face, illegible to him in the darkness of the verandah.

"So much depends on that, on you," he added. "You won't fail
me--tomorrow?"

"I'll do my best," she said, earnestly, struggling against depre