on me for my sins of omission!" he told himself
philosophically. "I should have stayed on the job at the office."

He went and put his head in at the dining-room door, where Merrill had
just commenced his solitary dinner. The young man signaled to him
instantly that he had a communication to make. Bates had vanished to
the upper floor with his bag, and when Creighton had assured himself
that there was no one in the pantry, he stepped quickly to Merrill's
side.

"I wanted to tell you that Miss Copley and the Mackay woman had a long
talk in Miss Copley's room very late last night--or early this morning,
rather. It was nearly four o'clock when Janet went to bed. They were
talking about something very--well, _fiercely_. Almost quarreling. I
couldn't make out the words. That's all, sir; I should really have
reported this to you over the wire."

"So you should, my boy, so you should," muttered Creighton absently.
"No harm done this time, fortunately."

He slipped away before the butler should return, and went out to the
veranda to wait until something had been prepared for him. He was glad
of the brief opportunity to be alone with his thoughts.

Merrill's latest bit of information was disturbing in the extreme--so
disturbing that he had to force his mind to consider a possibility from
which it shrank aghast. The two women had "talked fiercely." They had
"almost quarreled." _What about_? A hypothetical answer came to him
so ugly that it chilled him to the bone.

Granted that Janet Mackay, from motives yet obscure, had killed Simon
Varr, had Miss Ocky somehow learned the truth and become an accessory
after the crime? Swayed by her dislike of Simon and her friendship for
her companion of a score of years, had she condoned a crime and helped
a murderess to escape? What was that she had once said? "Janet and I
are fearfully responsible for each other!"

_Oof_! He took out his handkerchief and vigorously rubbed at the moist
palms of his hands.

He had sat in this very same spot the night before and worried over
Miss Ocky's probable reaction to a theory of Janet's guilt, but he had
not dreamed of anything so terrible as this. Ocky an accessory!
Finished with his palms, he shifted the handkerchief to his brow.

An unwelcome memory stirred in him of the scene the evening before when
he had leaped the piazza rail in pursuit of the monk. He could feel
again her grip on his arm. Had she known that the black