"What's your idea of going there to-night?" asked Bat, with an a.s.sumption of ease.

"Why, I might ask you that, old chap," said the other, thoughtfully, "but I won't. But my errand is no secret. It's a little matter of identification."

At this moment Quigley advanced, and with a bow to Nora said:

"If I have been an innocent instrument--perfectly innocent, mind you--in the hands of a designing person, Miss Cavanaugh, I beg your pardon. I was a.s.sured that the jewels were honestly come by; and when Mr.

Ashton-Kirk told me a while ago that they were really your property, I immediately placed myself in his hands, most anxious that complete justice should be done."

Nora made a vague answer to this, for at the moment she was watching the investigator, who stood with narrowed eyes, a thoughtful wrinkle between his brows, and one hand stroking his chin. And as she watched him, he spoke to Scanlon.

"It may be," said he, and there was a slow, curious smile about the corners of his mouth, "that Fenton's blundering into my plans will not be serious, after all. Indeed, it may be turned to account." The singular eyes went to the girl. "You are interested in this case, Miss Cavanaugh, and so is Scanlon. Why not go with Mr. Quigley and myself, and witness its solution."

"Fenton will spot us," said Scanlon. He had still a hope of doing what he and Nora had set out to do, and the pallor of her beautiful face and the misery in her eyes urged him to lose no chance. Once out of sight of the keen eyes of the investigator, he and the girl could take a taxi and make for Stanwick with all speed.

"Not if we go by motor," said Ashton-Kirk, in answer to his objections.

"We can do that and make as good time as the local."

"Taxicabs are so small," said Nora, as they descended a long flight of steps to the street. "Four will crowd one so."

In her mind was the same thought as in that of Bat's. Once let them divide into two parties--she and Scanlon making one--and she was quite sure that _their_ cab would be the first at No. 620 Duncan Street. But the investigator dashed this hope by leading the way, when they reached the street, to where some touring cars were to hire near the station.

"These," said he, quietly, "will be comfortable."

There was a businesslike young man in charge of the first of the cars, and he made his bargain, cranked his engine, received his orders and started off in an amazingly brief time. Inside of twenty minutes the suburbs, with their long rows of villa-like buildings, and their wide and smoothly paved streets, began to swing past them.

"I have your interest to thank, Miss Cavanaugh," said Ashton-Kirk, "for bringing this case to my attention--as a partic.i.p.ant, that is. There has been a simplicity in it which has attracted me from the start, and, at the same time, a curious interweaving of threads which, under almost any other set of circ.u.mstances, would have been as wide apart as the poles.

Scanlon has gone partly over the route with me, and because of this interweaving I have had considerable trouble in preventing his jumping at conclusions--in taking appearance for granted without waiting for proof. I am not sure how far I kept him from error," with a nod and a laugh, "for several times I believe he has gone the length of suspecting you."

Nora made no reply to this, but Scanlon said:

"I have believed she did it; everything pointed that way. But I never blamed her, for she had cause enough, even for that."

Ashton-Kirk nodded gravely.

"Cause, yes," said he. "And that is the heart-breaking thing connected with crime of a certain sort. Sometimes the criminal is much more innocent than the victim." He sat thoughtful for a s.p.a.ce, while the car bounded forward over the well-kept roads; then he resumed: "I could see, Scanlon, where and how your thoughts flowed as they did; but I could do nothing more at the time than tell you to make no snap judgments. The agitation of Miss Cavanaugh caught your attention in the first place, and so when we saw a woman's footprints by the rose arbor you concluded they were hers; we found a small revolver by the fence; that also made you think of her. When, by means of the particle of mortar on the bar of the cellar grating at Stanwick, I discovered that the same person who had prowled about the lawn on the night of the murder had scaled the scaffolding outside Miss Cavanaugh's window, you fancied this to be almost positive proof. What you saw at Bohlmier's hotel, and the story told you by Big Slim, made it almost d.a.m.ning.

"If you had waited, as a man more experienced in such things would have done," and the investigator smiled at his friend, "you would have saved yourself a state of mind. The prints at the rose arbor were made by a certain sort of shoe--a kind which I felt sure Miss Cavanaugh never wore. Later, in a second visit which I paid to No. 620 Duncan Street, I found the shoes which made the prints, and still with particles of soil clinging to them."

Bat caught a little moan from Nora, and he held her cold, limp hand in his strong, warm one.

"You're sure of that?" said he, to Ashton-Kirk.

"Quite positive. And the matter of the little revolver picked up on the lawn: that belonged to Fenton; he probably dropped it in scaling the fence. By means of a strong gla.s.s I saw a number scratched on the metal of the b.u.t.t. I at once knew this to be a p.a.w.nbroker's mark. Fuller, inside three hours, had located the p.a.w.nbroker, and the records of the place showed the weapon had been sold to Fenton only a little while before."

"Good work!" admired Bat. "Nice!"

"And speaking of Fenton," went on Ashton-Kirk, "it rather puzzled me at first how he had been over the ground about the house and left no trace.

But a little attention and look at his feet showed me that I had seen his tracks all over one side of the lawn--the ones of the man walking on his toes--and that I had supposed them to be those of Big Slim before he put on his 'creepers.'"

"Tell me," said Scanlon, "have you ever, in the course of this affair, believed young Frank Burton guilty?"

"At first I did not know. But after my second visit to Duncan Street, and a little talk with the colored maid, who is an honest imaginative soul, I was convinced that he was innocent."

"What did the maid tell you?" asked Bat.

"After the Bounder had been admitted to the house that night, she had gone back to the kitchen to her work. She heard Frank come in, but she did not catch anything of the altercation which followed. A little later, her duties finished, she started for her room which was at the top of the house. As she pa.s.sed along the hall, on the second floor, she noticed the door of the bath room standing open and remembered she had not supplied it with fresh towels. The linen closet is in a room at the far end of the hall; she went there and procured what she wanted, and as she came into the hall once more she saw young Frank Burton come quickly out of his room, stand at the head of the stairway for a moment as though listening, and then hurry down to the floor below."

"That must have been after he had taken his sister to her room," said Scanlon.

But Ashton-Kirk shook his head.

"No; a few minutes later the maid saw him ascend the stairs once more, and the sister was with him then."

"But," cried Nora, a vague fear as to what this might lead to in her mind, "when the maid was questioned by the coroner's physician she said----"

But the investigator stopped her.

"As I have said, the maid is an altogether unimaginative creature, and it never occurred to her that anything short of blows or outcries could have anything to do with the crime. It was plain to me, as I talked to her, that she had even then no notion of the importance of what she was saying. She was simply answering questions. However, added to what the nurse had told Dr. Shower, her information was vital, indeed. Miss Wheeler had gone into the kitchen, if you recall her testimony, at a time when the three Burtons, father, son and daughter, were in the sitting-room. She said she had gone to tell the maid she might go to bed, and found she had already gone; also she remained in the kitchen for a s.p.a.ce, attending to some duties of her own.

"During this interval young Burton must have gone to his room, probably sick at heart with the wrangling. His haste in emerging from the room, when the colored girl saw him later, and his pause to listen at the head of the stairs seem to indicate that something had attracted his attention below."

"Have you any idea what that was?" asked Scanlon.

"I am not yet sure. But this is how it builds up in my mind. When he reentered the sitting-room he found his father dead and his sister in a faint. Having, of course, a full knowledge of certain nervous seizures to which his sister was subject, it rushed upon him that, in a moment of frenzy, she had killed her father."

"No!" cried Nora Cavanaugh. "Oh, no!"

"He's only supposing," said Scanlon, soothingly. "That's nothing at all."

"The young man's brain is a quick one," proceeded Ashton-Kirk; "any one who follows his work in the _Standard_ knows that. He at once began to cast about, so it seems to me, for a way of concealing his sister's guilt. He took her to her room, and came down once more to the sitting-room. Allowing for a proper pa.s.sage of time, he then asked the nurse to call in the police. To them he told the story which he afterward repeated to the coroner's physician: that his father had met his death in the s.p.a.ce which had elapsed between his taking his sister to her room and his return to the sitting-room."

Bat looked at Nora; in the semi-dark of the car her face was drawn and despairing. There was not a ray of hope in Scanlon's own breast, and patiently he listened as the quiet voice of the investigator went on:

"The by-play between the young man and the girl, during their examination by Dr. Shower, which you reported so graphically to me, took my attention. He must have seen suspicion heading his way, and yet he took no real steps to prevent it. And then there was something else. You reported that he had appeared in the sitting-room after you had gone there with Osborne and Dr. Shower to examine the body; and his anxiety then concerning the nature of the instrument used in the commission of the crime struck me as being a bit unusual. He seemed to dread, apparently, that this would be shown to be something caught up on the spur of the moment, something belonging in the room. Without putting it in so many words, he seemed to insinuate that a regulation weapon, such as might have been brought into the house by an unknown, had been used.

In this I seemed to detect not only a desire to throw the police off the track, but also the existence of an element of hope. In the back of his mind was the thought that, after all, his sister might not be guilty. If the weapon used was not one that had been ready to her hand, there was a chance that she was innocent.

"However, the finding of the candlestick must have dissipated this hope, and when they charged him with the crime, he merely denied it; he, I think, feared to do or say anything which might direct the attention of the police definitely away from himself; for, in doing this, they might chance to think of his sister."

"But," said Nora, "you have no proof that all of this is true."

"Not proof," said Ashton-Kirk, smiling. "But there are certain almost unmistakable indications. One of these I brought about by my confidence to the police regarding the possibility of a woman being connected with the case. I felt that if he believed his sister guilty that this would stir him to some further action. It did, as you know. He instantly canceled his denials, and admitted the crime."

"Tell me," said Scanlon, "haven't you ever thought that maybe some one else had done this thing? Has your mind always been fixed on these two?

For example, didn't you, also, once think Miss Cavanaugh had a part in it?"

"Not for a moment," smiled Ashton-Kirk.

"Not even when I told you how I'd seen her at Bohlmier's?"