chauffeur slowed down and
hollered back to him on the back seat that he wanted to stop and look at
his radiator--it was about to blow up, too hot. He'd been burning the
dust on that stretch of good road.

"When he slowed down, the guy on the running board slipped off. Stevens
says he rolled down a bank."

The jubilant Mr. Crown stopped, for breath.

"That's all right, far as it goes," Hastings said; "but does he identify
that man as Russell?"

"To the last hair on his head!" replied the sheriff. "Stevens'
description of the fellow is Russell all over--all over! Just to show
you how good it is, take this: Stevens describe the clothes Russell
wore, and says what Otis said: he'd lost his hat."

"Stevens got a good look at him?"

"Says the headlights were full on him as he stood on one side of the
road, there on Hub Hill, waiting to slide on the running board.--And
this Stevens is a shrewd guy, the York chief says. I guess his story
plugs Russell's lies, shoots that alibi so full of holes it makes a
sifter look like a piece of sheet-iron!

"That car went up Hub Hill at seven minutes past eleven--that means
Russell had plenty of time to kill the girl after the rain stopped and
to get out on the road and slip on to that running board. And the car
slowed up, where he rolled off the running board, at eighteen minutes
past eleven.

"Time's right, location's right, identification's right!--Pretty sweet,
ain't it, old fellow? Congratulate me, don't you? Congratulate me, even
if it does step on all those mysterious theories of yours--that right?"

Hastings bestowed the desired felicitations upon the exuberant conqueror
of crime.

Turning from the telephone, he gazed a long time at the piece of grey
envelope on the table before him. He had clung to his belief that, in
those fragments of words, was to be found a clue to the solution of the
mystery. He picked up his knife and fell to whittling.

Outside in the street a newsboy set up an abrupt, blaring din, shouting
sensational headlines:

"SLOANEHURST MYSTERY SOLVED!--RUSSELL THE MURDERER!--ALIBI A FAKE!"

The old man considered grimly, the various effects of this development
in the case--Lucille Sloane's unbounded relief mingled with censure of
him for having added to her fears, and especially for having subjected
her to the ordeal of last night's experience with Mrs. Brace--the
adverse criticism from both press and public because of his refusal to
join in th