the bicycle man."

She paused and shifted her chair, which had rocked close to mine.

"And can you account for his coming to Asquith?" I asked innocently.

She was plainly embarrassed.

"I suppose I might account for it, Mr. Crocker," she replied. Then she
added, with something of an impulse, "After all, it is foolish of me not
to tell you. You probably know the Celebrity well enough to have learned
that he takes idiotic fancies to young women."

"Not always idiotic," I protested.

"You mean that the young women are not always idiotic, I suppose. No,
not always, but nearly always. I imagine he got the idea of coming to
Asquith," she went on with a change of manner, "because I chanced to
mention that I was coming out here on a visit."

"Oh," I remarked, and there words failed me.

Her mouth was twitching with merriment.

"I am afraid you will have to solve the rest of it for yourself, Mr.
Crocker," said she; "that is all of my contribution. My uncle tells me
you are the best lawyer in the country, and I am surprised that you are
so slow in getting at motives."

And I did attempt to solve it on my way back to Asquith. The conclusion
I settled to, everything weighed, was this: that the Celebrity had
become infatuated with Miss Thorn (I was far from blaming him for that)
and had followed her first to Epsom and now to Asquith. And he had
chosen to come West incognito partly through the conceit which he
admitted and gloried in, and partly because he believed his prominence
sufficient to obtain for him an unpleasant notoriety if he continued
long enough to track the same young lady about the country. Hence he had
taken the trouble to advertise a trip abroad to account for his absence.
Undoubtedly his previous conquests had been made more easily, for my
second talk with Miss Thorn had put my mind at rest as to her having
fallen a victim to his fascinations. Her arrival at Mohair being
delayed, the Celebrity had come nearly a month too soon, and in the
interval that tendency of which he was the dupe still led him by the
nose; he must needs make violent love to the most attractive girl on the
ground,--Miss Trevor. Now that one still more attractive had arrived
I was curious to see how he would steer between the two, for I made no
doubt that matters had progressed rather far with Miss Trevor. And in
this I was not mistaken.

But his choice of the name of Charles Wrexell Allen bothered me
considerably. I finally decid