"Don't you?"

She resented his insistence.

"There is only one idea possible, I think," she declared, rising: "the
footsteps that I heard fled from the house, not into it. The murderer is
not here."

He stood up, holding her gaze.

"I'm your representative now, Miss Sloane," he said, his manner fatherly
in its solicitude. "My duty is to save you, and yours, in every way I
can--without breaking the law. You realize what my job is--do you?"

"Yes, Mr. Hastings."

"And the advisability, the necessity, of utter frankness between us?"

"Yes." She said that with obvious impatience.

"So," he persisted, "you understand my motive in asking you now: is
there nothing more you can tell me--of what you heard and saw, when you
were at your window?"

"Nothing--absolutely," she said, again obviously annoyed.

He was close to a refusal to have anything to do with the case. He was
sure that she did not deal openly with him. He tried again:

"Nothing more, Miss Sloane? Think, please. Nothing to make you, us, more
suspicious of Mr. Webster?"

"Suspect Berne!"

This time she was frank, he saw at once. The idea of the young lawyer's
guilt struck her as out of the question. Her confidence in that was
genuine, unalloyed. It was so emphatic that it surprised him. Why, then,
this anxiety which had driven her to him for help? What caused the fear
which, at the beginning of their interview, had been so apparent?

He thought with great rapidity, turning the thing over in his mind as
he stood confronting her. If she did not suspect Webster, whom did she
suspect? Her father?

That was it!--her father!

The discovery astounded Hastings--and appealed to his sympathy,
tremendously.

"My poor child!" he said, on the warm impulse of his compassion.

She chose to disregard the tone he had used. She took a step toward the
door, and paused, to see that he followed her.

He went nearer to her, to conclude what he had wanted to say:

"I shall rely on this agreement between us: I can come to you on any
point that occurs to me? You will give me anything, and all the things,
that may come to your knowledge as the investigation proceeds? Is it a
bargain, Miss Sloane?"

"A bargain, Mr. Hastings," she assented. "I appreciate, as well as you
do, the need of fair dealing between us. Anything else would be
foolish."

"Fine! That's great, Miss Sloane!" He was still sorry for her. "Now, let
me be sure, once for all: you're concealing nothing