splint beating a sort of tattoo on the floor, but he stayed back
in the kitchen with me, or in the yard.

It was Sunday night or early Monday morning that Jennie Brice
disappeared. On Thursday evening, her husband came back. On Friday the
body of a woman was washed ashore at Beaver, but turned out to be that
of a stewardess who had fallen overboard from one of the Cincinnati
packets. Mr. Ladley himself showed me the article in the morning
paper, when I took in his breakfast.

"Public hysteria has killed a man before this," he said, when I had
read it. "Suppose that woman had been mangled, or the screw of the
steamer had cut her head off! How many people do you suppose would
have been willing to swear that it was my--was Mrs. Ladley?"

"Even without a head, I should know Mrs. Ladley," I retorted.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Let's trust she's still alive, for my
sake," he said. "But I'm glad, anyhow, that this woman had a head.
You'll allow me to be glad, won't you?"

"You can be anything you want, as far as I'm concerned," I snapped,
and went out.

Mr. Holcombe still retained the second-story front room. I think,
although he said nothing more about it, that he was still "playing
horse." He wrote a good bit at the wash-stand, and, from the loose
sheets of manuscript he left, I believe actually tried to begin a
play. But mostly he wandered along the water-front, or stood on one
or another of the bridges, looking at the water and thinking. It is
certain that he tried to keep in the part by smoking cigarettes, but
he hated them, and usually ended by throwing the cigarette away and
lighting an old pipe he carried.

On that Thursday evening he came home and sat down to supper with
Mr. Reynolds. He ate little and seemed much excited. The talk ran on
crime, as it always did when he was around, and Mr. Holcombe quoted
Spencer a great deal--Herbert Spencer. Mr. Reynolds was impressed, not
knowing much beyond silks and the National League.

"Spencer," Mr. Holcombe would say--"Spencer shows that every
occurrence is the inevitable result of what has gone before, and
carries in its train an equally inevitable series of results. Try to
interrupt this chain in the smallest degree, and what follows? Chaos,
my dear sir, chaos."

"We see that at the store," Mr. Reynolds would say. "Accustom a lot of
women to a silk sale on Fridays and then make it toothbrushes. That's
chaos, all right."

Well, Mr. Holcombe came in that night