er two
thousand dollars.

"She made no pretence of explaining why she wanted it. She didn't have to
explain. I was a rich man at that time, comparatively speaking, and she
knew I would give her the money.

"I mailed her a check for two thousand, but on the train which carried
the check I sent a private detective--not to make any arrests, you
understand, not to raise any row or start any scandal. I merely wanted to
find out what or who troubled her. Women, you know, particularly good
women, are prone to fall into the hands of unscrupulous people.

"Four days later the detective reported to me, but it was of no special
value. He couldn't tell me where the two thousand had gone. If Enid had
paid it to a man or a woman, the fellow had missed seeing the
transaction. With the description of the jewels I had given him, however,
he made a round of the pawnshops in Atlantic City and learned that all of
them had been pawned--for a total of seven thousand."

"Pawned by whom--herself?" asked Bristow.

"No. They were pawned in different shops by a man with a gold tooth and a
thick, chestnut-brown beard."

"No wonder you doubt the negro's guilt!" exclaimed Braceway.

"Excuse me," put in Bristow quickly, "but did you ever mention this to
Mr. Withers?"

"Certainly, not," Fulton answered. "I never told it to a living soul. And
as my inquiries had netted me practically nothing, I was obliged to let
the matter drop. It was bad enough for me to have interfered with her, my
daughter and a married woman, in the hope of helping her. Most assuredly,
I could not have distressed her, degraded her, by telling her a detective
had been investigating her."

"And that was the end of it?" asked Braceway.

"Not quite. She went back to Atlanta. Withers wanted to know where her
jewels were. She wrote to me in an agony of fear and sorrow, asking me to
redeem the jewels. I did it. I went to Atlantic City myself. She had sent
me the tickets. It cost me seven thousand dollars."

"That was four years ago?" Braceway continued the inquiry.

"Yes."

"Did Miss Maria Fulton at that time know Henry Morley?"

"No; I think not. I think Morley's been a friend of hers for about three
years."

The three were silent, each busy with the same thought: that Morley was
being blamed for a series of acts at this time which duplicated what had
happened four years ago when he was unknown to the Fulton family, with
this distinction, that this last time murder h