you
hard?"

"Oh, yes. Several."

"Then, if one of the striking workmen had set the fire, he would have
selected one or more of them. I think we may safely assume that the
incendiary was unfamiliar with the tannery and consequently was not one
of the strikers."

"You win," said Jason Bolt, after a pause. "I've wondered why the
scoundrel didn't touch off something more important, but the
significance of his failure to do so never occurred to me. Go on, Mr.
Creighton; I'm getting a lesson in straight thinking."

"Not so very straight," smiled the detective. "Given a fact, you have
to think over and under and all around it before you can grasp its
every implication. It's only because I've had a lot of experience that
I can draw inferences a shade faster than the average man--and often
quite as inaccurate!"

"If it wasn't either a striker or a person actuated by the desire for
gain," said Krech, "who is left? What other motives are there for
murder?"

"Revenge. Jealousy. What about the last, Miss Copley? Was he
interested in any other woman than his wife?"

"No," said Miss Ocky, "and remarkably little in her!"

"Um. Friction?"

"No--not friction."

He saw her reluctance to answer this line of questioning and took it
for granted that the presence of the others embarrassed her. He
dropped the topic, intending to pursue it at a later, more favorable
moment.

"Revenge," he continued. "Did Varr ever wrong any one to the extent of
driving them to murder him?"

"No," said Jason Bolt. "Simon was a hard man but not as bad as that."

"No," said Miss Ocky--but she had gasped, and Creighton had heard her.
He made a mental note of that.

"We're getting along nicely," said Herman Krech, who never liked to be
out of the limelight too long. "It wasn't for money, it wasn't for
revenge, it wasn't jealousy; by the time we've eliminated a few more
motives we'll have only the correct one left."

"Meanwhile," said Creighton, "what's going on in the house? Who is
running the police show?"

"Chap named Norvallis," answered the big man. "The Sheriff, the County
Physician and a few plainclothes sleuths are in attendance, but
Norvallis is the real leader of the gang. He has been going through
the usual motions--asking everybody about everything--"

"Hold on!" broke in Jason. "I don't know that I agree with you.
Seemed to me his questions were mighty casual and indifferent. Did it
strike you that he had a s