sick girl, sobbing and chafing her pale
hands; the investigator was at a telephone summoning the police.
Scanlon's glance then wandered to Fenton, and there rested.

"You told us a couple of hours ago," said he, "that a woman killed Tom
Burton and that you saw her do it. Has he," and he nodded toward
Quigley, "got it on the right party?"

"Yes," replied the broken-nosed man, "he's got it right; it was the
nurse. You don't have to look any further than that."

"But," said Bat, a last doubt in his mind, "what was the idea of you
wanting to go up-stairs a while ago, if you didn't want her?" pointing
to Mary.

"It was the sparks I wanted," said Fenton. "I thought if any were left
they were in the nurse's room."

* * * * *

Next morning Nora Cavanaugh, still very pale, but with a light in her
eyes such as had not been there for many days, sat snugly in the corner
of a sofa at her home, wrapped about in a beautiful old shawl. Near by
sat Bat Scanlon; and standing before them, his hat and stick in his hand
as though about to leave, was Ashton-Kirk.

"I'll admit," the big athlete was saying, "when the thing was finally
brought down to a woman and Nora was eliminated," with a smiling nod
toward her, "I could see nobody but Mary Burton. The nurse never
occurred to me."

"And yet _you_ seem to have suspected her from the start," said Nora,
her eyes wonderingly on the criminologist. "Why was that?"

"It began with the candlestick--the weapon used in the commission of the
murder. Candlesticks go in pairs, usually. I found the mate to it on a
shelf in the room across the hall from the sitting-room--that in which
the nurse sat reading when Tom Burton was admitted to the house. That
one of a pair of candlesticks should be in the sitting-room, and one in
the room opposite, struck me as being unusual; later, I spoke to the
maid of this. She said they both belonged in the room--on the
shelf--where I found the second one."

Nora gave a little gasp, and her hand went to her heart.

"It is horrible," she said.

"While on my second visit to Duncan Street, I was at pains to note one
of the nurse's shoes; it was of a peculiarly comfortable make--the same
as those which made the prints at the rose arbor.

"These two things rather centered my attention upon her; and I began to
pry into her record. Burgess, one of my men, went as far as New Orleans,
looking her up. A number of things were found agains