ied them back to their
midnight session with him immediately following the discovery of Mildred
Brace's body. The smile did not lessen his look of unquestionable power;
his words were sharp, clipped-off.

"I take it," he said briskly, untouched by their demeanour of
indifference, "you gentlemen will be interested in the fact that I've
cleared up this mystery."

"Ah-h-h!" drawled Sloane. "Again?"

"What do you mean by 'again'?" he asked, good-naturedly.

"Crown, the sheriff, accomplished it four days ago, I'm credibly
informed."

"He made a mistake."

"Ah?" Sloane ridiculed.

"Yes. 'Ah!'" Hastings took him up curtly, and, with a quick turn of his
head, addressed himself to Wilton: "Judge, I've been to Pursuit."

When he said that, his head was thrown back so that he squinted at
Wilton down the line of his nose, under the rims of his spectacles.

"Pursuit!"

Wilton's echo of the word was explosive. He had been leaning back in his
chair, eying the detective from under lowered lids, and drawing deep,
prolonged puffs from his cigar. But, with the response to Hastings'
announcement, he sat up and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the
rim of the table. It was an awkward attitude, compelling him to extend
his neck and turn his face upward in order to meet the other's glance.

"Yes," Hastings said, after a measurable pause. "Interested in that?"

"Not at all," Wilton replied, plainly alarmed, and fubbed out his cigar
with forefinger and thumb, oblivious to the fact that he dropped a
little shower of fire on the table cover.

"I'll trouble you to observe, Mr. Sloane," Hastings put in, "that, being
excited, the judge's first impulse is to extinguish his cigar: it's a
habit of his.--Now, judge, in Pursuit I heard a lot about you--a lot."

"All right--what?"

He made the inquiry reluctantly, as if under compulsion of the
detective's glance.

"The Dalton case--and your part in it."

"You know about that, do you?"

"All about it," Hastings said, in a way that made doubt impossible;
Sloane, even, bewildered as he was, got the impression of his ruthless
certainty.

Wilton did not contest it.

"I struck in self-defence," he excused himself wearily, like a man
taking up a task against his will. "It would be ridiculous to call that
murder. No jury would have convicted me--none would now, if given the
truth."

"But the body showed twenty-nine wounds," Hastings pressed him, "the
marks of twenty-nine separate