Mr. Tower
has returned home, safe and sound--"

"By Jove, that's good news! But what a strange business it is! My mother
was with Helen Tower this morning, trying to console her."

"Good! Now, perhaps, you'll sit up and take notice. The truth is that
the mystery of this outrage on Tower is not--cannot be--of recent
origin. I'm sure it is bound up with some long-forgotten occurrence,
possibly a crime, in which the secret of the birth and parentage of
Winifred Bartlett is involved. That girl is no more the niece of her
'aunt' than I am her nephew."

"But one is usually the niece of one's aunt."

"I think you need a cigarette," said Clancy dryly. "Organisms accustomed
to poisonous stimulants often wilt when deprived too suddenly of such
harmful tonics."

Carshaw edged around slightly and looked at this quaint detective.

"I apologize," he said contritely. "But the crowd got my goat when it
jeered at me as a murderer. And the long wait was annoying, too."

Clancy, however, was not accustomed to having his confidences slighted.
He was ruffled.

"Perhaps what I was going to say is hardly worth while," he snapped. "It
was this. If, by chance, your acquaintance with Winifred Bartlett goes
beyond to-day's meeting, and you learn anything of her life and history
which sounds strange in your ears, you may be rendering her a far
greater service than by flattening Fowle's nose if you bring your
knowledge straight to the Bureau."

"I'll not forget, Mr. Clancy. But let me explain. It will be a miracle
if I meet Miss Bartlett again."

"It'll be a miracle if you don't," retorted the other.

So there was a passing whiff of misunderstanding between these two, and,
like every other trivial phase of a strange record, it was destined to
bulk large in the imminent hazards threatening one lone girl. Thus,
Clancy ceased being communicative. He might have referred guardedly to
Senator Meiklejohn. But he did not. Oddly enough, his temperament was
singularly alike to Carshaw's, and that is why sparks flew.

The heart, however, is deceitful, and Fate is stronger than an irritated
young man whose conventional ideals have been besmirched by being
marched through the streets in custody. The garage in which Carshaw's
automobile was housed temporarily was located near One Hundred and
Twelfth Street. He went there on the following afternoon to see the
machine stripped and find out the exact extent of the damage. Yet he
passed Winifred's hou