arned your retainer."

VII. The Azure Ring

Files of newspapers and innumerable clippings from the press bureaus
littered Kennedy's desk in rank profusion. Kennedy himself was so
deeply absorbed that I had merely said good evening as I came in and had
started to open my mail. With an impatient sweep of his hand, however,
he brushed the whole mass of newspapers into the waste-basket.

"It seems to me, Walter," he exclaimed in disgust, "that this mystery
is considered insoluble for the very reason which should make it easy to
solve--the extraordinary character of its features."

Inasmuch as he had opened the subject, I laid down the letter I was
reading. "I'll wager I can tell you just why you made that remark,
Craig," I ventured. "You're reading up on that Wainwright-Templeton
affair."

"You are on the road to becoming a detective yourself, Walter," he
answered with a touch of sarcasm. "Your ability to add two units to
two other units and obtain four units is almost worthy of Inspector
O'Connor. You are right and within a quarter of an hour the district
attorney of Westchester County will be here. He telephoned me this
afternoon and sent an assistant with this mass of dope. I suppose he'll
want it back," he added, fishing the newspapers out of the basket again.
"But, with all due respect to your profession, I'll say that no one
would ever get on speaking terms with the solution of this case if he
had to depend solely on the newspaper writers."

"No?" I queried, rather nettled at his tone.

"No," he repeated emphatically. "Here one of the most popular girls
in the fashionable suburb of Williston, and one of the leading younger
members of the bar in New York, engaged to be married, are found dead in
the library of the girl's home the day before the ceremony. And now,
a week later, no one knows whether it was an accident due to the fumes
from the antique charcoal-brazier, or whether it was a double suicide,
or suicide and murder, or a double murder, or--or--why, the experts
haven't even been able to agree on whether they have discovered poison
or not," he continued, growing as excited as the city editor did over my
first attempt as a cub reporter.

"They haven't agreed on anything except that on the eve of what was,
presumably, to have been the happiest day of their lives two of the best
known members of the younger set are found dead, while absolutely no
one, as far as is known, can be proved to have been ne