He was right,
you know. No wonder--"

Sometime later he roused from deep study and looked at Bassett.

"How did you get the connection?"

"I saw Melis, and learned that Hines was in it somehow. He was the
connecting link between Beverly Carlysle and the Thorwald woman. But I
couldn't connect him with Beverly herself, except by a chance. I wired
a man I knew in Omaha, and he turned up the second marriage, and a
daughter known on the stage as Beverly Carlysle."

Bassett was in high spirits. He moved about the room immensely pleased
with himself, slightly boastful.

"Some little stroke, Dick!" he said. "What price Mr. Judson Clark
to-night, eh? It will be worth a million dollars to see Wilkins' face
when he reads that thing."

"There's no mention of me as Livingstone in it, is there?"

"It wasn't necessary to go into that. I didn't know--Look here," he
exploded, "you're not going to be a damned fool, are you?"

"I'm not going to revive Judson Clark, Bassett. I don't owe him
anything. Let him die a decent death and stay dead."

"Oh, piffle!" Bassett groaned. "Don't start that all over again. Don't
pull any Enoch Arden stuff on me, looking in at a lighted window and
wandering off to drive a taxicab."

Suddenly Dick laughed. Bassett watched him, puzzled and angry, with a
sort of savage tenderness.

"You're crazy," he said morosely. "Darned if I understand you. Here I've
got everything fixed as slick as a whistle, and it took work, believe
me. And now you say you're going to chuck the whole thing."

"Not at all," Dick replied, with a new ring in his voice. "You're right.
I've been ten sorts of a fool, but I know now what I'm going to do. Take
your paper, old friend, and for my sake go out and clear Jud Clark. Put
up a headstone to him, if you like, a good one. I'll buy it."

"And what will you be doing in the meantime?"

Dick stretched and threw out his arms.

"Me?" he said. "What should I be doing, old man? I'm going home."

XLV

Lucy Crosby was dead. One moment she was of the quick, moving about the
house, glancing in at David, having Minnie in the kitchen pin and unpin
her veil; and the next she was still and infinitely mysterious, on her
white bed. She had fallen outside the door of David's room, and lay
there, her arms still full of fresh bath towels, and a fixed and intense
look in her eyes, as though, outside the door, she had come face to face
with a messenger who bore surprising news. Doctor