I have noticed that ideas usually come to me at the moment of awaking. The next morning I came back to a consciousness of Gene Benbow\'s affairs with a perplexity which was momentarily illuminated by the thought, "Why don\'t I look up Barker\'s home? He must have been staying somewhere, and the people there may know something about him."

Why hadn\'t I thought of that before? However, yesterday had been a pretty busy day as it was. I turned at once to the city directory, and then to the telephone directory. There was no indication in either that such a person as Alfred Barker lived in Saintsbury. The Western Land and Improvement Co. appeared in the telephone directory, but that of course was no help. I called up the police department and asked if they could tell me where Barker had lived. Yes, they had investigated,--26 Angus Avenue, was the number.

"And, by the way," my informant added, "Barker\'s body has been claimed."

"By whom?" I demanded.

"Collier, the undertaker. He says that a woman came to his place last night and gave him directions and money, but would not give her name. She was veiled, and he knows nothing about her, except that she paid him to see that the body was decently interred."

"That\'s all you know?"

"That\'s all anybody knows."

"Collier is in charge, then?"

"Yes."

That was interesting, so far as it went. Was the woman who had provided for Barker\'s burial merely some benevolent stranger who had been emotionally stirred by the newspaper accounts, (that sort of thing happens more frequently than you would believe,) or was there some closer bond? The answer seemed as hidden as everything else connected with this strange affair.

On my way to my office, I hunted up 26 Angus Avenue. It was such a place as I might have expected,--a shabby house in a row, on a semi-obscure street. My ring was answered by a young woman of about twenty,--an unkempt, heavy-eyed young woman, who didn\'t look happy. She listened unresponsively while I preferred my request for some information about Mr. Barker, and left me standing in the hall while she returned to some dark back room. I heard her say, "Ma! Here\'s another wants to know things." And presently Ma appeared, hot from the kitchen, and somewhat fretted.

"I can\'t be answering questions all day," she said, at me rather than to me. "There was a string of people here all day yesterday, taking my time. Just because Mr. Barker roomed here is no reason why I should know all about him."

"You probably know more than any of the rest of us," I said, deferentially. "Had Mr. Barker been long with you?"

"Long enough, but that don\'t mean that I know much about him. He was here awhile in the summer two years ago, and when he was in town afterwards he would come here to see if I could give him a room. But he never stayed long at a time. I think he was some kind of a traveling man,--here to-day and gone to-morrow. He has been here now for the last six weeks, but he never had any visitors or received any letters and I don\'t know the names and addresses of any of his relatives,--and that\'s what I told the police and all the rest of them!" She finished breathless but still defiant.

"That seems to cover the ground pretty thoroughly," I laughed. "But I shall have to ask another question on my own account. Was he married?"

"No!" said the girl positively. I had not noticed that she had returned. She was standing in the doorway behind me.

"Not that we know," said the mother, more guardedly, and with an anxious look at her daughter.

"Did he leave any effects here?"

"You can see the room, like all the rest," she said, with grim impartiality.

"I\'d like to."

She led the way up a narrow stairway from the front hall to a rear room on the second floor. She opened the door with a key which she took from her pocket, and stepped inside.

"Land sakes!" she exclaimed.

The reason was clear. The room was all upset. The contents of a trunk, which stood in one corner, were scattered upon the floor, the drawers of the bureau were open, and a writing desk near the window had evidently been thoroughly searched. Every drawer was open, and papers were scattered upon the floor.

"Land sakes!" she repeated. "Gertie, come here."

Gertie came, and swept the room with the unsurprised and comprehending eye of the practical young woman of to-day.

"Someone got in through the window," she said briefly. "You know that clasp doesn\'t catch, Anybody could get in. Well, I hope they are satisfied now!" From her tone I understood that she hoped just the opposite.

"We might all have been murdered in our beds!" exclaimed the mother.

"Oh, it wasn\'t us they were after," said Gertie carelessly. "It was him! I tell you,--" She stopped suddenly and bit her lip.

"But who could ever have known that the catch didn\'t work?" demanded the mother in a baffled manner.

"To whom did you show the room yesterday?" I asked. "Anyone who had an opportunity to examine the room inside could have made plans for returning at night."

"Well, first it was the police, and they told me not to let anyone touch anything,--though I knew that myself. Then there were people all day long,--curiosity seekers, I call them. There was one little old gentleman that came up first,--I say old, but he was as spry as any of them. Something like a bird in the way he turned his head."

It suggested Mr. Ellison exactly! "With spectacles?" I asked.

"Yes. Gold-brimmed. Gray hair that curled up at the ends."

"Anyone else you remember? Was there a tall young man, fresh-shaven, with rather a blue-black tint where the beard had been taken off?"

"There was!" cried Gertie. "I saw that! He came last night, about seven."

"Well, I didn\'t let him go up," said the mother. "I was tired bothering with them."

"But you told him which room Mr. Barker had," said Gertie.

"Who was he?"

"I don\'t know. I saw such a looking man with Mr. Barker the other day, and I just asked out of curiosity."

"I will have to report this to the police," said the woman wearily. "No end of trouble. If you please, sir, I\'ll lock the door now."

"One moment!" I had been standing beside the writing desk, and my eye had caught a few words written on a sheet of letter paper,--the beginning of an unfinished letter. "Is this Mr. Barker\'s writing, do you know?"

The letter read:

"My Dear Wife:--So I have found my little runaway! Did she think that she could hide away from her hubby? Don\'t fool yourself, little one!"

Gertie had snatched the paper from my hand and read it with startled eyes. "I don\'t believe it," she said, violently. "That--is not his writing!" She flung the paper down, and left the room.

"What is it?" asked her mother, fretfully.

"An unfinished letter to his wife,--if it is his."

"We never knew much about him," she said, looking troubled. I could easily guess a part of the story that troubled her.

I had no excuse for further lingering, so I left Mrs. Barrows (she asked my name and gave me her own at parting) and went down to my office. Fellows was waiting for me, and it struck me at once that his manner was weighted with unusual significance.

"Well?" I asked. He always waited, like a dog, for a sign.

"Barker was married," he said. "He married a Mary Doherty up in Claremont four years ago, when he was forty. She was twenty."

"Is that all you have found out?"

"All so far."

"That\'s good, so far as it goes, but I can add to it. She ran away from him, is probably now in Saintsbury, and the chances are that it was she who empowered Collier the undertaker to arrange for his burial. Advertise in the papers for Mary Doherty, and say that she will learn of something to her advantage by communicating with me. I\'ll make it to her advantage! Keep the advertisement going until I tell you to stop. That\'s all."

Fellows went off and I knew the matter would be attended to faithfully and with intelligence. But several times during the day I noticed that he was unlike himself. He was absent-minded and he looked unmistakably worried. It frets me to have people about me who are obviously burdened with secret sorrows they will ne\'er impart, and I finally spoke.

"What in thunder is the matter with you today, Fellows? What\'s on your mind?"

"Nothing," he said quickly. But after a minute or so he looked up with that same disturbed air. "Who would have thought that he had a wife?"

"That\'s not especially astonishing."

"I never thought that there could be a woman--a woman who could care for him, I mean."

"She probably didn\'t. She ran away."

"Still it must have been a terrible shock. And if she cared about burying him,--"

"You\'re too tender-hearted, Fellows," I said. But I confess that I liked his betrayal of sympathy. He was too unemotional as a rule.

Well, that brings me down to my interview with Garney, which took place that afternoon.

Mr. Garney was one of the regular faculty at Vandeventer College, and to meet his convenience I asked him to fix the time and place for the interview which I desired. He said he would come to my office at four, and he kept his appointment promptly. I had told Jean Benbow that if she could come to my office at half past four, I would take her down to see her brother. She came fifteen minutes ahead of time,--and that\'s how she came into the story. Into that part of the story, I mean. But I had all that Garney could probably tell me before she came in and disconcerted him. I think my first question surprised him.

"Mr. Garney, do you know anything to Eugene Benbow\'s discredit?"

He looked at me with an intentness that I found was habitual with him, as though he weighed my words before he answered them.

"You don\'t mean trivial faults?"

"No. I mean anything serious."

He shook his head. "No. He is an exceptionally fine fellow in every way. High-spirited and honorable. I suppose his sensitiveness to his family honor, as he conceives it, may be called a fault, since it has unbalanced him to the extent of leading him into a crime."

"You know of no absorbing entanglement, either with man or woman?"

"No," he said, evidently puzzled by my question.

"Have you ever heard him express vengefulness toward Barker?"

"Oh, yes," he said, decidedly. "I know that he has brooded over that. He does not talk of it in general, I believe, but he has been a special pupil of mine, and he has taken me somewhat into his confidence. That Barker should have escaped all punishment for the slaying of his father has worn upon him. He spoke of it only once, but then he expressed himself in such a way that I knew he had been carrying it in his mind a long time."

"Then you believe that he really shot Barker?"

He stared at me, amazed. "Of course."

"You think of nothing that would prompt him to assert his guilt, if, in point of fact, he should not be guilty?"

I never saw a man look more astonished. "If you really mean that, I can only say that I can think of nothing short of insanity which would make him say he shot Barker if he didn\'t. Why, he has confessed. Do you mean to say that you think the confession false? And if so, why?"

"I am not thinking yet. I am merely gathering facts of all sorts. When I get them all together, I expect to discover the truth, whatever it may be."

"I supposed his confession was conclusive. But I suppose you lawyers get to looking at everything with suspicion. Have you anything to support your extraordinary hypothesis beyond your natural desire to clear your client?"

I had no intention of taking him extensively into my confidence, but I was saved the necessity of answering at all by the opening of my office door. Jean Benbow put her head in, with a shy, childlike dignity.............