"Then it was Honora you overheard over the dictagraph?" I asked, quickly.

"Not at first," replied Doyle. "I\'ll come to that later. Let me give it all to you first."

He pulled from his pocket a set of typewritten notes and excitedly began to condense what McCabe had just heard over the dictagraph in the Wilford apartment, sometimes giving it to us from memory, then refreshing his mind from what McCabe had transcribed.

"It seems that the maid, Celeste, had a visitor," began Doyle.

"Who was it?" hastened Kennedy, impatiently.

"A man named Chase."

"Who\'s he?"

"Another detective."

"Like Rascon?"

Doyle nodded doubtfully. "I don\'t seem to know him," he remarked, sententiously, though in a tone that was prejudiced.

To Doyle all private detective agencies were as [187] the scum of the earth. I know Kennedy made mental note to look the man up, unprejudiced.

"What do you know about him?" asked Craig.

"Very little—except that from what Celeste said Mrs. Wilford herself must have employed him at one time or another—perhaps even now. I guess that woman knew more about what was going on than we think."

I glanced from Doyle to Kennedy. Could it be possible that we ourselves, in turn, were being watched by her? And was Honora not the simple, unsophisticated woman I had thought?

"Evidently," went on Doyle, "Celeste was trying to fasten the crime on Vina Lathrop."

"How\'s that?" queried Kennedy, sharply.

"Well," returned Doyle, running his eye over the transcribed conversation to pick out that part which substantiated the statement, "it seems as though Celeste was trying to tell Chase something that Chase didn\'t accept. Here it is. Chase\'s remark was lost—but it must have been about Mrs. Wilford\'s actions that night of the murder.

"\'No, no, no—she was not out of this apartment that night.\' That was what Celeste said in answer to him.

"\'Come, come, now,\' Chase said, \'what\'s the use of that? You might tell that to Doyle—but why tell me? Where was she?\'

"You see, they\'re all trying to put it over on me," interjected Doyle, apoplectically.
[188]

"She might have been out—and still not have been near Mr. Wilford or his office," I returned.

Doyle gave me a withering glance and did not even deign to reply to a mere reporter.

"Here\'s the other thing, Kennedy," ignored Doyle. "I mean about trying to put it on Vina Lathrop—to save Mrs. Wilford.

"\'Wasn\'t she at Mr. Wilford\'s office?\' That\'s a return question from Celeste to Chase to divert attention, I tell you."

"What was Chase\'s answer?"

Doyle ran his eye down the page. "\'I\'ve traced pretty nearly everything Mrs. Lathrop did that night—except for a couple of hours after she left the Gorham Hotel, where she had dinner. If I could locate the driver of the cab that took her away, I\'d get a clue. But it was a passing taxi the doorman hailed, and there doesn\'t seem to be any trace of him—yet.\' There—don\'t you see? They\'re trying to get something on Mrs. Lathrop. It\'s plain. I ask you—why?"

Doyle leaned back and regarded us with an air of conscious triumph.

"Cost what it will," he added, "it\'s apparent that Celeste is devoted and loyal to Honora Wilford, too. I tell you they\'re covering up something," he emphasized, waving the notes, "and I intend to uncover it."

However, Kennedy did not seem to attach much importance to what either Celeste or Chase had [189] said. Evidently he had a pretty clear idea already of what had happened.

I recalled Celeste and the "Aussage test." Was Celeste to be trusted—even over a dictagraph?

Doyle seemed to read in Kennedy\'s face what I had already seen, and hastened on to new points in his arguments from the notes.

"That\'s all very well about Celeste," he continued, excitedly, "but here\'s the real news, after all. The most important thing was what happened an hour or so later, after Chase had gone. McCabe picked up the voice of a woman. It was Mrs. Lathrop herself calling on Mrs. Wilford. How about that?"

"What!" I exclaimed, involuntarily, I suppose, because of Kennedy\'s continued silence. "Vina called on Honora Wilford? Why, man, I should have thought the wires would have fused!"

"Well, that\'s what she did," asserted Doyle, "and you\'ll be more surprised when I tell you what happened."

Doyle was enjoying the suspense he himself had created. Still Kennedy said nothing, not so much, I think, because he would not give Doyle the satisfaction of observing his interest as because his mind was at work piecing into his own theories the new facts that were being brought out. For that has always been Kennedy\'s method—the gathering of facts, fitting them together, like a mosaic, with fragments missing, and then with endless patience fitting the new fragments as they are discovered [190] into the whole picture of a crime until the case was completed and he was ready to act with relentless and unerring precision.

As for myself, I listened to what Doyle had to reveal with amazement. Here was a meeting, separated only by hours, if not merely by minutes, from another in which Vina\'s own husband had called on Shattuck.

"As nearly as I can make out from McCabe\'s notes," began Doyle, "Mrs. Lathrop must have been seeking this meeting and Mrs. Wilford avoiding it for some time. You see, the interview was so passionate that often the voices were indistinct and his notes are fragmentary in spots. However, there\'s enough to show what it was all about."

Doyle turned a page. "It started with Mrs. Lathrop accusing Mrs. Wilford of avoiding seeing her. When Mrs. Wilford pleaded the tragedy and the surveillance she is under, Mrs. Lathrop hinted that she was using these things to shield herself.

"Here\'s where Mrs. Lathrop began to let something out. \'Your maid, Celeste, I hear, has been talking about me. And I know, also, Honora, that you\'ve had a private detective, a man named Chase. You\'ve had him following me!\'

"McCabe tells me that the tone of this was very accusing, and that Mrs. Wilford did not make any attempt to answer. I only wish we had something like a dictagraph—detectavue, I\'d call it—that would let us look at the faces of some of these people as we hear them over this mechanical ear—a mechanical [191] eye, understand? I\'ll wager Mrs. Wilford\'s face was a study. She\'s a match for any man. But I\'d like to see her matched against a woman like Mrs. Lathrop. She\'s clever, Kennedy, clever."

Kennedy nodded, but without enthusiasm over the proposition. Rather it was an invitation to Doyle to go on.

"There\'s a lot more," continued Doyle, hurriedly. "Here\'s what I want. Listen to this. If it\'s true, we\'ve got something. Mrs. Wilford hadn\'t said much and it seemed to arouse Mrs. Lathrop to go farther. Listen. \'I hadn\'t intended to say this, Honora,\' she burst out, \'but you were at his office—that night. Come—own up, dear.\' Get that \'dear\' at the end? I don\'t know where Mrs. Lathrop got her information. I wish I did. But at least she seems to me to know something."

"Or else she\'s very clever at fishing for information," I interrupted, for I was not able to restrain it.

Doyle was so cocksure of his deductions that it antagonized me. On his part, I am sure, while he may not have had much respect for my profession, he had a wholesome fear of it, as many detectives have. For, after all, we newspaper men have the key that unlocks the door to everything.

On the other hand, I must admit that I was not at all positive in my own mind. Was Vina fishing—or did she really know something? Was that why Honora was silent? Or was Honora contemptuous of a woman of Vina\'s type and was silence without [192] any admission her sweetest revenge? What was the purpose that lay back of this visit?

For one thing, the silence of Honora, whether it spelled guilt or mere contempt, had its effect on Vina and made her more daring.

"\'Then this Professor Kennedy,\' continued Doyle, reading from the notes. \'With that Mr. Jameson he has been finding out things at the Orange and Blue Tea-room and other places. They\'ve got a woman working for them, too, I imagine. I tell you, Honora, they know.\'

"\'Know what?\' Honora answered, and McCabe thought she wasn\'t quite as cold and calm as usual.

"Then Mrs. Lathrop went a little bit farther—oh, I\'ll say that these women are clever—both of them. On the whole, now I\'m not so sure which of them carried off the honors. Come to think of it, Mrs. Wilford was clever, too. She has to be. Anyhow, Mrs. Lathrop went a step farther. \'They know about the Greenwich Village stuff, now.\' What\'s that, Kennedy? You never told me that."

There was something reproachful in Doyle\'s voice, assumed, no doubt, but still there, as much as to say that he was taking Kennedy into his confidence and expected a return.

Kennedy stole a glance at me and I understood.

It was just this that had impelled Doyle to come to us. He had not understood it himself and, in order to keep up with us, was obliged to take us into his own confidence. Briefly Kennedy related, [193] with an occasional word from me, what had happened since the river-front-saloon raid.

"Oh, I see," remarked Doyle, though any one could tell that he really did not see. "That\'s what she meant when she went on and said, \'About Freud and all that, Honora. Zona Dare told me, over the \'phone. That\'s why I came over.\'

"\'Indeed, Vina, you needn\'t have troubled yourself,\' was Mrs. Wilford\'s reply. \'It\'s a matter of perfect indifference to me how much or how little Professor Kennedy and Mr. Jameson know or find out.\'

"McCabe says she was very cutting in her remarks there. But he also says he thought she was weakening. Anyhow, it had its effect on Mrs. Lathrop. She flared right up.

"\'Don\'t care?\' she cried. \'You don\'t care if Kennedy finds out about your interest in the play, about your life, about Freud, the "soul scar" theory, and all that? I may not know much about sci............