in my power, in rescuing Mr.
Hamilton!"

"Good! I'll make all the necessary arrangements and call for you
to-night at eight o'clock. Meanwhile, keep a strict guard upon your
tongue, and say nothing to anyone of what has occurred. Have you told
your wife of your adventure?"

"No, Mr. Blaine; I merely told her I was out on a sudden night
call. I decided to wait until I had seen you before mentioning the
extraordinary features of the case."

"You are a man of discretion, Doctor! Until eight o'clock, then. You
may expect me, without fail."

Doctor Alwyn left, and Blaine spent a busy half-hour making his
arrangements for the night's raid. Scarcely had he completed them when
the telephone shrilled. The detective did not at first recognize the
voice which came to him over the wire, so changed was it, so fraught
with horror and a menace of tragedy.

"It is you, Miss Lawton?" he asked, half unbelievingly. "What is the
matter? What has happened?"

"I must see you at once, _at once_, Mr. Blaine! I have made a
discovery so unexpected, so terrible, that I am afraid to be alone; I
am afraid of my own thoughts. Please, please come immediately!"

"I will be with you as soon as my car can reach your door," he
replied.

What could the young girl have discovered, shut up there in that great
lonely house? What new developments could have arisen, in the case
which until this moment had seemed plain to him to the end?

He found her awaiting him in the hall, with ashen face and trembling
limbs. She clutched his hand with her small icy one, and whispered:

"Come into the library, Mr. Blaine. I have something to tell you--to
show you!"

He followed her into the huge, somber, silent room where only a few
short weeks ago her father had met with his death. Coming from the
brilliant sunshine without, it was a moment or two before his eyes
could penetrate the gloom. When they did so, he saw the great leather
chair by the hearth, which had played so important a part in the
tragedy, had been overturned.

"Mr. Blaine,"--the girl faced him, her voice steadied and deepened
portentously,--"my father died of heart-disease, did he not?"

The detective felt a sudden thrill, almost of premonition, at her
unexpected question, but he controlled himself, and replied quietly:

"That was the diagnosis of the physician, and the coroner's findings
corroborated him."

"Did it ever occur to you that there might be another and more
terrible explan