his erect, alert figure giving
little evidence of the weariness he had felt a few minutes before.

The lame man lingered on the porch, considering Braceway's confident
assertion that he did not "propose to disregard one scintilla of
evidence, one smallest clue." But, he reflected, that was exactly what
Braceway was doing: not only disregarding one scintilla, but keeping
himself blind to a great many clues, the evidence against George Withers
and that against the negro.

"I can't make out his game," he concluded. "What's his idea about
scandal, I wonder? The only possible scandal lies in the fact that Mrs.
Withers paid blackmail for years. And the only way to make the fact
public is to keep on denying that Perry's guilty. He seems to be trying
to dig up scandal instead of hiding it."

Suddenly, with his characteristic quickness of thought, he realized that
he disliked Braceway, definitely felt an aversion for him. When he was
in Braceway's presence, influenced by his vitality and magnetism and
listening to his conversation, he lost sight of his real feeling; but,
left to himself, it came to the surface strongly. He wished he had never
met the man. He knew he would never get close to him. And yet, he
thought, why dislike him?

"Oh, he isn't my kind. _I_ don't know. Yes, I know. He's just an edition
de luxe of the ordinary four-flusher, a lot of biff-bang talk and bluff."
He laughed, perhaps ridiculing himself. "Why waste mental energy on him?
I've worked this case out. He hasn't."

And public opinion was with him. It conceded that he had the right answer
to the puzzle. At that very moment the "star" reporter of _The Sentinel_
was hammering out on his typewriter the following paragraph for
publication in the morning:

"While it is generally recognized that Chief Greenleaf deserves great
praise for the promptness with which the guilty man was discovered, the
chief himself called attention this evening to the invaluable assistance
he had received from Mr. Lawrence Bristow, already a well-known authority
on crime. It was Bristow who, in addition to other brilliant work, forged
the last and most impressive link in the chain of evidence against
Carpenter. He did this by suggesting that the tests be made to determine
whether or not the negro's finger nails showed traces of a white person's
skin."

Later on in his story, the reporter wrote:

"Not a clue has yet been uncovered leading to the location of the stolen
jewel