"Marcia's talking rot," he exclaimed, his little pig's eyes soberer than
I expected. "I don't mean about those two boys, for I bet they're no
more dead than I am, and it would be just like them to lie low and set
up a smothered strike among the men as soon as you were ass enough to be
taken in by some stray bones! But I do mean it about Thompson. There's
no sense in saying there was nothing queer about the way he came back
and was found dead--because there was! It was natural enough that the
police couldn't trace him in Montreal, for I hadn't a sign of data to
give them: but it's darned unnatural that _I_ can't trace him in
Caraquet. I've sieved the whole place upside down, and nobody ever saw
Thompson after he left Billy Jones's that morning on his way to
Caraquet!"

Macartney stared at him for a minute; then he put down the pipe he was
smoking. "If I thought that, I'd sieve the whole place upside down,
too," he said so quietly that I remembered Thompson had been his best
friend, and that he had looked deadly sick beside his grave. "But I
don't. What it comes to with me is that no one remembers seeing Thompson
in Caraquet that particular time, but no one says he wasn't there!"

"Then where's the----" But Dudley checked himself quick as light. If I
had been quite sure he was himself I should have been curious about what
he had meant to say. But all he substituted was: "Well, nobody remembers
seeing him that day, anyway, except Billy Jones!"

"Seems to me that narrows poor Thompson's potential murderers down to
Billy Jones," said Macartney ironically, since Billy Jones would not
have murdered the meanest yellow pup that ever walked, and Macartney
knew it as well as I did. But Dudley made the two of us sit up.

"Who's to say he didn't?" he demanded. "What darned thing do we know
about him to say that he mightn't have waylaid poor old Thompson for
what money he had on him, and kept him shut up till he had a chance to
say he found him drowned?"

Macartney and I stared at each other. The very thought was so monstrous
that it must have struck him, as it did me, that it was born of Dudley's
drugs and not his intelligence. But it had to be stopped, or heaven knew
whom Dudley would be accusing next.

"For God's sake, Wilbraham, shut up," said Macartney curtly. "You make
me sick. Isn't it enough to have the old man dead, without saying
innocent people killed him!"

"Yes, if they are innocent," Dudley returned so quietly th