ever Louise does," he said, "nothing will convince me, Aunt Ray,
that she doesn't care for me. And up to two months ago, when she and
her mother went west, I was the happiest fellow on earth. Then
something made a difference: she wrote me that her people were opposed
to the marriage; that her feeling for me was what it had always been,
but that something had happened which had changed her ideas as to the
future. I was not to write until she wrote me, and whatever occurred,
I was to think the best I could of her. It sounded like a puzzle.
When I saw her yesterday, it was the same thing, only, perhaps, worse."

"Halsey," I asked, "have you any idea of the nature of the interview
between Louise Armstrong and Arnold the night he was murdered?"

"It was stormy. Thomas says once or twice he almost broke into the
room, he was so alarmed for Louise."

"Another thing, Halsey," I said, "have you ever heard Louise mention a
woman named Carrington, Nina Carrington?"

"Never," he said positively.

For try as we would, our thoughts always came back to that fatal
Saturday night, and the murder. Every conversational path led to it,
and we all felt that Jamieson was tightening the threads of evidence
around John Bailey. The detective's absence was hardly reassuring; he
must have had something to work on in town, or he would have returned.

The papers reported that the cashier of the Traders' Bank was ill in
his apartments at the Knickerbocker--a condition not surprising,
considering everything. The guilt of the defunct president was no
longer in doubt; the missing bonds had been advertised and some of them
discovered. In every instance they had been used as collateral for
large loans, and the belief was current that not less than a million
and a half dollars had been realized. Every one connected with the
bank had been placed under arrest, and released on heavy bond.

Was he alone in his guilt, or was the cashier his accomplice? Where was
the money? The estate of the dead man was comparatively small--a city
house on a fashionable street, Sunnyside, a large estate largely
mortgaged, an insurance of fifty thousand dollars, and some personal
property--this was all.

The rest lost in speculation probably, the papers said. There was one
thing which looked uncomfortable for Jack Bailey: he and Paul Armstrong
together had promoted a railroad company in New Mexico, and it was
rumored that together they had sunk large sums of