fact. I didn't come to report, for
there's nothing to say, except that I'm sticking at it, and if I don't
get a sight of those two before long I'm going to burn a red sulphur
light some fine night, and yell 'fire!' I bet that'll bring the old
codger out, for all his rheumatism!"

"Not a bad idea," Blaine commented, adding dryly: "What did you come
for, then, Guy?"

"To find out if you had any news you were willing to tell me yet,
sir--of Emily?"

"Yes." The detective's slow smile was quizzical. "The most significant
news in the world."

"You've discovered their destination--hers and her father's?" the
young operative cried eagerly. "You traced their taxi, of course!"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

"Just that, Guy--that I haven't been able to trace the taxicab in
which they left their house. Think it over. Report to me when you've
got anything definite to tell me."

With a curt nod Blaine dismissed him, but he glanced after the
dejected, retreating figure with a very kindly, affectionate light in
his fatherly eyes. It was dusk when he was aroused from a deep study
of his carefully annotated resume of the case by the excited jangle of
the telephone bell, to hear Guy Morrow's no less excited but joyous
voice at the other end of the wire.

"I've found her! I've found Emily! She loves me! She does! I made her
listen, and she understands everything! She don't mind a bit about my
hounding her father down, because she sees how it all had to be, and
the old man's a regular brick about it!"

"Where--"

"It was the kitten did it--that blessed Caliban! And think of it, sir;
I've always hated cats, ever since I was a kid! Emily says--"

"But how--"

"Maybe if the hall had been lighted--but Mrs. Quinlan's got that
parsimony peculiar to all landladies--and I trod on its tail, and it
was all up!"

"Morrow, are you a driveling idiot, or an operative? Are you
reporting, or exploding? If you called me up to tell me that you trod
on the tail of your landlady's parsimony, you don't need a job in a
detective bureau; you need a lunacy commission!" Blaine's voice was
vexed, but little smiling lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes.

"I beg your pardon, sir; I am almost crazy, I think--with happiness.
I've found Mr. Jimmy Brunell and his daughter. They are the two
mysterious boarders whom Mrs. Quinlan has been shielding all this
time, and I never even suspected it! It was Jimmy Brunell who fired
at me that night of the day