cement that he was married,
even to a wife like Winifred. Would he be playing the game with those
good fellows in the detective bureau? Was it fair even to Winifred that
she should be asked to pay the immediate price, as it were, of her
rescue? So the fateful words were not uttered, and the two trudged on,
talking with much common sense, probing the doubtful things in
Winifred's past life, and ever avoiding the tumult of passion which must
have followed their first kiss.

In due course an innkeeper was aroused and the mishap of a car
explained. The man took them for husband and wife; happily, Winifred did
not overhear Carshaw's smothered:

"Not yet!"

The girl soon went to her room. They parted with a formal hand-shake;
but, to still the ready lips of scandal, Carshaw discovered the
landlord's favorite brand of wine and sat up all night in his company.

CHAPTER XIII

THE NEW LINK

Steingall and Clancy were highly amused by Carshaw's account of the
"second burning of Fairfield," as the little man described the struggle
between Winifred's abductors and her rescuer. The latter, not so well
versed in his country's history as every young American ought to be, had
to consult a history of the Revolution to learn that Fairfield was
burned by the British in 1777. The later burning, by the way, created a
pretty quarrel between two insurance companies, the proprietors of two
garages and the owner of a certain bullock, with Carshaw's lawyer and a
Bridgeport lawyer, instructed by "Mr. Ralph Voles," as interveners.

"And where is the young lady now?" inquired Steingall, when Carshaw's
story reached its end.

"Living in rooms in a house in East Twenty-seventh Street, a quiet place
kept by a Miss Goodman."

"Ah! Too soon for any planning as to the future, I suppose?"

"We talked of that in the train. Winifred has a voice, so the stage
offers an immediate opening. But I don't like the notion of musical
comedy, and the concert platform demands a good deal of training, since
a girl starts there practically as a principal. There is no urgency.
Winifred might well enjoy a fortnight's rest. I have counseled that."

"A stage wait, in fact," put in Clancy, sarcastically.

By this time Carshaw was beginning to understand the peculiar quality of
the small detective's wit.

"Yes," he said, smiling into those piercing and brilliant eyes. "There
are periods in a man's life when he ought to submit his desires to the
acid tes