coroner said he telephoned first to Hall's
club. But the steward said Hall didn't stay there, as there was no
vacant room, and that he had stayed all night at a hotel."

"What hotel?"

"I don't know. The coroner asked the steward, but he didn't know."

"Didn't he find out from Hall, afterward?"

"I don't know, Stone; perhaps the coroner asked him, but if he did, I
doubt if Hall told. It didn't seem to me important."

"Burroughs, my son, you should have learned every detail of Hall's
doings that night."

"But if he were not in West Sedgwick, what difference could it possibly
make where he was?"

"One never knows what difference anything will make until the difference
is made. That's oracular, but it means more than it sounds. However, go
on."

I went on, and I even told him what Florence had told me concerning the
possibility of Hall's interest in another woman.

"At last we are getting to it," said Stone; "why in the name of all good
detectives, didn't you hunt up that other woman?"

"But she is perhaps only a figment of Miss Lloyd's brain."

"Figments of the brains of engaged young ladies are apt to have a solid
foundation of flesh and blood. I think much could be learned concerning
Mr. Hall's straying fancy. But tell me again about his attitude toward
Miss Lloyd, in the successive developments of the will question."

Fleming Stone was deeply interested as I rehearsed how, when Florence
was supposed to be penniless, he wished to break the engagement. When
Philip Crawford offered to provide for her, Mr. Hall was uncertain;
but when the will was found, and Florence was known to inherit all her
uncle's property, then Gregory Hall not only held her to the engagement,
but said he had never wished to break it.

"H'm," said Stone. "Pretty clear that the young man is a
fortune-hunter."

"He is," I agreed. "I felt sure of that from the first."

"And he is now under arrest, calmly waiting for some one to prove his
innocence, so he can marry the heiress."

"That's about the size of it," I said. "But I don't think Florence is
quite as much in love with him as she was. She seems to have realized
his mercenary spirit."

Perhaps an undue interest in my voice or manner disclosed to this astute
man the state of my own affections, for he gave me a quizzical glance,
and said, "O-ho! sits the wind in that quarter?"

"Yes," I said, determined to be frank with him. "It does. I want you, to
free Gregory Hall, if he's i