lips.

"While he was in Baltimore, I searched the bedroom in which he was
supposed to be asleep.

"Miss Martin, in whom I had been obliged to confide, helped me. We found
in the two-inch sole of the left shoe, which of course he did not take
with him, a hollow place, a very serviceable receptacle. In it was the
bulk of the missing Withers jewelry, the stones unset, pried from their
gold and platinum settings.

"They are, I dare say, there now."

The two policemen stared wide-eyed at Bristow. He was, they decided, the
"slickest" man they had ever seen.

"You see why he executed the trick? It was to establish forever, beyond
the possibility of question, his innocence. Plainly, if an unknown man
pawned the Withers jewelry in Baltimore while Bristow slept, exhausted by
a major hemorrhage, in Washington, his case was made good, his alibi
perfect.

"You can appreciate now how he built up his fake case against Perry
Carpenter, his use of the buttons, his creeping about at night, like a
villain in cheap melodrama, dropping pieces of the jewelry where they
would incriminate the negro most surely, and his exploitation of the
'winning clue,' the finger nail evidence.

"Furthermore, he gave Lucy Thomas a frightful beating to force from her
the statement against Perry. In this, he was brutal beyond belief. I saw
that same afternoon the marks of his blows on her shoulders. They were
sufficient proofs of his capacity for unbridled rage. The sight of them
strengthened my conviction that, in a similar mood, he had murdered Mrs.
Withers."

"The negro lied!" Bristow broke in at last, his words a little fast
despite his surface equanimity. "I subjected her to no ill treatment
whatever. Anyway"--he dismissed it with a wave of his hand--"it's a minor
detail."

Braceway, without so much as a glance at him, continued:

"And that gave me my knowledge of her being a partial albino. She has
patches of white skin across her shoulders, and Perry, in struggling with
her for possession of the key to Number Five, had scratched her there
badly. That, I think, disposes of the finger nail evidence against
Carpenter.

"The rest followed as a matter of course. An examination of Major Ross'
collection of circulars describing those 'wanted' by the police of the
various cities for the past six years revealed the photograph of Splain.
Bristow has changed his appearance somewhat--enough, perhaps, to deceive
the casual glance--but the identificat