can't understand what it is," he confessed. "Of course Jasper is not
a bad-looking fellow. He has perfect manners and is a charming
companion. You don't think--"

"That he is winning on his merits?" Frank shook his head. "No, indeed, I
do not. It is difficult for me to discuss my private affairs, and you
know how reluctant I am to do so, but you are also aware of what I think
of May. I was hoping that we should go back to the place where we left
off, and, although she is kindness itself, this girl who is more to me
than anything or anybody in the world, and who was prepared to marry me,
and would have married me but for Jasper's machinations, was almost
cold."

He was walking up and down the room, and now halted in his stride and
spread out his arms despairingly.

"What am I to do? I cannot lose her. I cannot!"

There was a fierceness in his tone which revealed the depth of his
feeling, and Saul Arthur Mann understood.

"I think it is too soon to say you have lost her, Frank," he said.

He had conceived a genuine liking for Frank Merrill, and the period of
tribulation through which the young man had passed had heightened the
respect in which he held him.

"We shall see light in dark places before we go much farther," he said.
"There is something behind this crime, Frank, which I don't understand,
but which I am certain is no mystery to you. I am sure that you are
shielding somebody, for what reason I am not in a position to tell, but
I will get to the bottom of it."

No event in the interesting life of this little man, who had spent his
years in the accumulation of facts, had so distressed and piqued him as
the murder of John Minute. The case had ended where the trial had left
it.

Crawley, who might have offered a new aspect to the tragedy, had
disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed him. The
most strenuous efforts which the official police had made, added to the
investigations which Saul Arthur Mann had conducted independently, had
failed to trace the fugitive ex-sergeant of police. Obviously, he was
not to be confounded with Rex Holland. He was a distinct personality
working possibly in collusion, but there the association ended.

It had occurred to the investigator that possibly Crawley had
accompanied Rex Holland in his flight, but the most careful inquiries
which he had pursued at Montreux were fruitless in this respect as in
all others.

To add to his bewilderment, investigations