him anything. She knew that Garth regularly met her
father and Sledge Hume; she knew that whatever the business was that
had drawn Leland and Hume together had drawn Conway into it also.

That matter finally disposed of, left with the unsatisfactory
conclusion that Garth had his own reasons for remaining silent, and
that Shandon would soon hear from Leland, Wanda broached the other
subject which had all along been the one cloud upon her happiness.
Driven to the rim of her mind by her gayer moods it was still there,
sinister and black upon the horizon.

"I should have told you the other day," she said slowly, "the day when
we found so much else to talk of. You will understand why papa has
refused to let you come to the house."

"What is it, Wanda?" he asked eagerly, hoping there would be a direct
charge so that he might vindicate himself.

"Have you no idea, Wayne?" a little curiously. "Have you never had a
suspicion of the reason that makes papa hate you so?"

"He disliked my father--"

"It is not that. Maybe that makes him the more ready to suspect you--"
And then she blurted it out, a little defiantly, laying her hand softly
upon his arm. "He thinks, he has thought all along, that you killed
Arthur!"

He stared at her gravely, the shock of such a charge too great to be
appreciated to its fullest extent in a moment.

"He thinks that I killed Arthur?" he repeated incredulously. And then,
bitterly, "My God, Wanda. This is too horrible."

"Listen, Wayne. We must talk this over calmly and see what is to be
done. You see papa has disliked you because he hated your father. Oh,
it's unjust but it's so human! He has believed all the hard things men
have said of you and they have said many. He knows that the day before
Arthur was killed you and he quarrelled. Then you went away, you were
gone a year and he didn't think that you would ever come back. You
came back, you made me love you. Believing as he did, papa did the
natural thing when he refused to let you come again."

"He had no right to believe it," he cried angrily. "I shall tell him
so. I shall make him tell me of a single thread of the wildest
circumstantial evidence to point to this hideous thing!"

"It will do no good," she said simply. "Nothing in the world can be
done unless--oh, I have thought so much about this, Wayne--unless the
real murderer can be found. Surely if you offered rewards, if you
hired detectives, if you talked with