motionless, as if she had been
there some time. I didn't know if she were merely knocked flat about the
wolves and Collins, or scared Macartney might have found out something
about her. But she was staring at Macartney's unconscious back as you
look at a chair or anything, without seeing it, and if he were pale she
was dead white,--except her mouth that was arched to a piteous crimson
bow, and her eyes that looked dark as pools of blue ink. But she did not
speak of Dunn or Collins.

"Do you mean Thompson's been found dead?--the quiet man who was here
when I came?" she stammered, as if it choked her. And I had an ungodly
fright she was going to say she must have shot him on the corduroy road!

"Billy Jones found him drowned in Lac Tremblant; it was an accident," I
exclaimed sharply, before she could come out with more about shooting
and wolf bait, and perhaps herself, than I chose any one to know,--till
I knew it first. And I saw the blood flash into her face as it had
flashed into mine at the sight of her.

"Oh, I thought Mr. Macartney meant he'd been--murdered," she returned
faintly. "I'm glad--he wasn't. But if he had been, I suppose it would be
sure to come out!"

"Crime doesn't always come out, Miss Paulette," said Macartney.

But Paulette only answered listlessly that she was not sure, one never
could tell; and moved to her usual seat by the fire.

I was knocked endways about Collins; for who could have been on the
corduroy road if he had not. I would have given most of the world for
ten minutes alone with my dream girl and explanations. But Dudley began
the whole story of Thompson over again, and Macartney stood there, and
Marcia--whom I had not seen since she went to bed with a swollen
face--came in, dressed in her hideous green tweed, and stood on tiptoe
to chuck me under the chin, with a "Hullo, Nicky, you're back again!"

There was no earthly hope of speaking to my dream girl alone. I shoved
the mystery of Collins into the back of my head and went off to my room
before I remembered I was still unconsciously holding that torn-off flap
of poor old Thompson's envelope in my shut fist. I dropped it on my
floor,--and grabbed it up again, to stare at it for a full minute.
Because there was writing on _it_, too.

"For God's sake, search my cards--my cards--my cards," Thompson had
scrawled across the three-cornered envelope flap Macartney's grab had
left in my hand: and, knowing Thompson, it was pitiful. He w