ruption; it would give her time to regain the
self-control she had been on the point of losing.

Sheriff Crown was at the other end of the wire. He was back at
Sloanehurst, he explained, and Miss Sloane had asked him to give the
detective certain information:

He had asked the Washington police to hold Eugene Russell, or to
persuade him to attend the inquest at Sloanehurst. Crown, going in to
Washington, had stopped at the car barns of the electric road which
passed Sloanehurst, and had found a conductor who had made the
ten-thirty run last night. This conductor, Barton, had slept at the
barns, waiting for the early-morning resumption of car service to take
him to his home across the city.

Barton remembered having seen a man leave his car at Ridgecrest, the
next stop before Sloanehurst, at twenty-five minutes past ten last
night. He answered Russell's description, had seemed greatly agitated,
and was unfamiliar with the stops on the line, having questioned Barton
as to the distance between Ridgecrest and Sloanehurst. That was all the
conductor had to tell.

"Mrs. Brace's description of Russell, a real estate salesman who had
been attentive to her daughter," continued Crown, "tallied with Barton's
description of the man who had been on his car. I got his address from
her. But say! She don't fall for the idea that Russell's guilty! She
gave me to understand, in that snaky, frozen way of hers, that I was a
fool for thinking so.

"Anyway, I'm going to put him over the jumps!" The sheriff was highly
elated. "What was he out here for last night if he wasn't jealous of
the girl? Wasn't he following her? And, when he came up with her on the
Sloanehurst lawn, didn't he kill her? It looks plain to me; simple. I
told you it was a simple case!"

"Have you seen him?" Hastings was looking at his watch as he spoke--it
was nine o'clock.

"No; I went to his boarding house, waked up the place at three o'clock
this morning. He wasn't there."

Hastings asked for the number of the house. It was on Eleventh street,
Crown informed him, and gave the number.

"I searched his room," the sheriff added, his voice self-congratulatory.

"Find anything?"

"I should say! The nail file was missing from his dressing case."

"What else?"

"A pair of wet shoes--muddy and wet."

"Then, he'd returned to his room, after the murder, and gone out again?"

"That's it--right."

"Anybody in the house hear him come in, or go out?"

"Not a s