ves which came from the crooked lips of the
older man, not seeming even to notice their presence as he hurried on
toward Mother Howard's boarding house. Whether Fate had played with
him or against him, he did not know,--nor could he summon the brain
power to think. Happenings had come too thickly in the last few hours
for him to differentiate calmly; everything depended upon what course
the Rodaines might care to pursue. If theirs was to be a campaign of
destruction, without a care whom it might involve, Fairchild could see
easily that he too might soon be juggled into occupying the cell with
Harry in the county jail. Wearily he turned the corner to the main
street and made his plodding way, along it, his shoulders drooping, his
brain fagged from the flaring heat of anger and the strain that the
events of the night had put upon it. In his creaky bed in the old
boarding house, he again sought to think, but in vain. He could only
lie awake and stare into the darkness about him, while through his mind
ran a muddled conglomeration of foreboding, waking dreams, revamps of
the happenings of the last three weeks, memories which brought him
nothing save sleeplessness and the knowledge that, so far, he fought a
losing fight.

After hours, daylight began to streak the sky. Fairchild, dull, worn
by excitement and fatigue, strove to rise, then laid his head on the
pillow for just a moment of rest. And with that perversity which
extreme weariness so often exerts, his eyes closed, and he slept,--to
wake at last with the realization that it was late morning, and that
some one was pounding on the door. Fairchild raised his head.

"Is that you, Mother Howard? I'm getting up, right away."

A slight chuckle answered him.

"But this is n't Mother Howard. May I see you a moment?"

"Who is it?"

"No one you know--yet. I 've come to talk to you about your partner.
May I come in?"

"Yes." Fairchild was fully alive now to the activities that the day
held before him. The door opened, and a young man, alert, almost cocky
in manner, with black, snappy eyes showing behind horn-rimmed glasses,
entered and reached for the sole chair that the room contained.

"My name 's Farrell," he announced. "Randolph P. Farrell. And to make
a long story short, I 'm your lawyer."

"My lawyer?" Fairchild stared. "I haven't any lawyer in Ohadi. The
only--"

"That does n't alter the fact. I 'm your lawyer, and I 'm at your
service. And