clue to the murderer. When
found, the man had been dead for some hours.

"Well, sir," observed Guy at last, when the secretary had withdrawn,
"one by one they're getting away from us--and by the same route. First
Rockamore, now Paddington!"

Blaine looked up with a grim smile.

"Putting a woman wise to anything is like lighting a faulty
time-fuse: you never can tell when you're going to get your own
fingers blown off! But tell me something, Guy. What was that tune you
whistled a moment ago, when Marsh came in with the news? It had a
vaguely familiar ring."

"Oh, that?" asked the operative, with a sheepishly guileless air. "It
was just a bit from an English musical comedy of two or three years
back, I think. It's got a silly-sounding name--something like 'There's
a Boat Sails on Saturday--'"

Blaine's wry smile broadened to a grin of genuine appreciation, and
rising, he clapped the young man heartily on the shoulder.

"Right you are, Guy! And it won't be our job to search the sailing
lists. You may not always be able to see what lies under your nose,
but your perspective is not bad. Hell has only one fury worse than a
woman scorned, that I know of, and that is a woman fooled! We'll let
it go at that!"

The evening had already grown late, but that eventful day was not to
end without one more brief scene of vital import. Marsh presently
reappeared, this time bearing a card.

"'Mr. Mallowe,'" read Blaine, with a half-smile. "Show him in, Marsh,
and have your men ready. You know what to do. No, Guy, you needn't go.
This interview will not be a private one."

"Mr. Blaine!" Mallowe entered pompously and then paused, glancing
rather uncertainly from the detective to Morrow. It needed no keen
observer to note the change in the man since the scene of that
morning, at Miss Lawton's. He had become a mere shell of his former
self. The smug unctuousness was gone; the jaunty side-whiskers
drooped; his chalk-like skin fell in flabby folds, and his crafty
eyes shifted like a hunted animal's.

"Mr. Blaine, I had hoped for a strictly confidential conference with
you, but I presume this person to be one of your trusted assistants,
and it is immaterial now--the matter upon which I have come is too
pressing! Scandal, notoriety must be averted at all costs! I find that
a frightful, a hideous mistake has been made, and I am actually upon
the point of being involved in a conspiracy as terrible as that of
which my poor friend Penni