es out.
They'll flag the train. We'll get into a stateroom and stay there; have
our meals served right there. You see, we don't get into Washington until
dark tomorrow night."

"Yes; I see. The scheme's all right."

They were silent for several minutes.

"I've been thinking," said Bristow, "about Mrs. Withers having kept all
her jewelry in the bungalow--unprotected, you know--nobody but her
sister and herself there. It was risky."

"Yes," agreed Braceway. "What do you get from that?"

"Perhaps she was waiting--knew demands for money might come at any
time--and was afraid to be caught without them."

"Exactly. That's the way I figured it."

They were silent again.

Braceway was the first to speak. He narrated all the facts he had learned
from Abrahamson and Roddy, and concluded with the story Withers had told
him on the station platform. He held back none of the details. Evidently,
his irritation toward Withers had subsided. When Bristow handed him the
watch Maria Fulton had found, he said laughingly:

"It's a good thing George told me about it, isn't it? Otherwise, we might
have had to devote a lot of time to showing that he had nothing to do
with the crime itself."

"And yet," qualified Bristow, "he said nothing to explain why the watch
should have been so far back in the grass and to the side of the steps in
this direction. According to his story, he must have dropped it on the
other side, the down side."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't see how it could have fallen where Miss Fulton found it unless
somebody had actually picked it up and thrown it there. He told you he
was all the time down on the sidewalk, and, when the other man flung him
off, he reeled down-hill, not up."

"That's hair-splitting," Braceway objected good-humouredly. "Nothing
could make me think George responsible for the murder."

Bristow repeated then everything Maria Fulton had said that afternoon,
and gave a fair, clear idea of her strong suspicion that the murder had
actually been done by either Withers or Morley. It had no effect on
Braceway.

"Miss Fulton," he said, "told you, of course, what she had seen and heard
and, in addition, what she had guessed. But I don't see that it changes
anything. I can't let it make me suspect Withers any more than I can
accept as valuable Abrahamson's quite positive opinion that the man
wearing the disguise was Withers. Things don't fit in. That's all. They
don't fit into such a theory."

"