ainly was clear that, as he had suggested at the
Logan Trial, there was serious trouble in the Crozier family of two, and
the offender must naturally be the man who had flown, not the woman who
had stayed. Here was circumstantial evidence.

His suggestive glance, the look in his eyes, did not escape Crozier,
who read it all aright; and a primitive expression of natural antipathy
passed across his mediaeval face, making it almost inquisitorial.

"Will you care to sit?" he said, however, with the courtesy he could
never avoid; and he pointed to a chair beside the little table in the
centre of the room. As Burlingame sat down he noticed on the table a
crumpled handkerchief. It had lettering in the corner. He spread it out
slightly with his fingers, as though abstractedly thinking of what he
was about to say. The initial in the corner was K. Kitty had left it
on the table while she was talking to Mrs. Crozier a halfhour before.
Whatever Burlingame actually thought or believed, he could not now
resist picking up the handkerchief and looking at it with a mocking
smile. It was too good a chance to waste. He still hugged to his evil
heart the humiliating remembrance of his expulsion from this house, the
share Crozier had had in it, and the things which Crozier had said
to him then. He had his enemy now between the upper and the nether
mill-stones, and he meant to grind him to the flour of utter abasement.
It was clear that the arrival of Mrs. Crozier had brought him no relief,
for Crozier's face was not that of a man who had found and opened a
casket of good fortune.

"Rather dangerous that, in the bedroom of a family man," he said,
picking up the handkerchief and looking suggestively from the lettering
in the corner to Crozier. He laid it down again, smiling detestably.

Crozier calmly picked up the handkerchief, saw the lettering, then went
quietly to the door of the room and called Mrs. Tynan's name. Presently
she appeared. Crozier beckoned her into the room. When she entered, he
closed the door behind her.

"Mrs. Tynan," he said, "this fellow found your daughter's handkerchief
on my table, and he has said regarding it, 'Rather dangerous that, in
the bedroom of a family man.' What would you like me to do with him?"

Mrs. Tynan walked up to Burlingame with the look of a woman of the
Commune and said: "If I had a son I would disown him if he didn't mangle
you till your wife would never know you again, you loathesome thing