I had rather expected that when I reached Saintsbury, Barney would be on hand to give an explanation of his urgent message, but no Barney was to be seen. I took a taxi to my office, which was across the street from Barney\'s stand. For the first time within my memory, Barney\'s stand was shut up and the owner gone. I told the chauffeur to wait and went up to my office. Perhaps Fellows could throw some light on things,--unless he too had disappeared.

Someone was there. I heard talking before I entered,--the loud and unfamiliar tones of a man\'s voice. I went in without knocking. Fellows was there, at my desk. His start of surprise turned into unmistakable confusion as he saw me. His own chair was occupied by a pretty girl, whom I recognized at once as Minnie Doty, the houseworker at Mr. Ellison\'s, and the girl whom I had seen with Fellows in the park. The third person in the room was a tall man who stood before the window, hat in hand. Evidently he was the man whose voice I had heard.

"Well, I must be going," he said now after a moment\'s awkward pause, and moved toward the door. As he turned from the window the light fell upon his shaven jaw, blue-black under the skin, and I recognized him. He was the man Barker had addressed with a taunting question about his marriage.

"Don\'t leave the room," I said quietly, keeping my position before the door. "Fellows, introduce me."

A gleam of amusement crossed Fellows\' sardonic countenance. Leaning against the edge of my desk, he indicated the seated girl with a slight gesture. "Mr. Hilton, allow me to present you to Mrs. Alfred Barker!"

"How do you do?" the girl said nervously, trying to rise to the social requirements of the occasion.

"How long have you known this fact, Fellows?" I asked, watching him closely.

"For some time," he said easily. "Miss Doty--Mary Doherty her name was originally, but she changed it to Minnie Doty when she ran away from her husband and got a position as houseworker at Mr. Ellison\'s--she answered our advertisement for Mary Doherty, to learn something to her advantage. I talked with her,--she didn\'t want to be known as Barker\'s wife or in any way connected with the inquest, so I agreed to keep her secret for a short time, because--"

"Because she was afraid this man, whose name I don\'t know,--"

"It\'s Timothy Royce, and I\'m in the fire department. Anything else you would like to know?" the tall man threw in defiantly.

"Yes. I\'d like to know if it was you who telephoned to Miss Doty, early in the morning after Barker was killed, \'Barker is dead and now you must marry me.\' Was that you?"

"Oh, Tim!" cried Miss Doty,--or whatever she preferred to be called. "Oh, Tim, I knew they would find it out!"

"What of it?" said Royce doggedly. "Anybody is welcome to know that I want to marry you."

"I see. And when Barker asked you in the hall that day if you were married yet, and you drew back to hit him,--"

"It was his devilishness," said Royce concisely. "He had just spotted Min and me, and he knew well enough I couldn\'t marry while he was above ground, and he was rubbing it in. That night that he was killed, Min and I had gone out to talk things over. I wanted her to run away with me, but she said she couldn\'t while he was alive, and the next morning, when the patrolman on our beat told me Barker was dead, I tried to telephone Min. I couldn\'t go to her, because I was on duty. I knew it would break her up, being a woman, even though he was ugly as sin to her. Women are that way, I suppose. She even saw about getting him buried. But she was scairt to death of having to come forward and tell things and be talked about and have to appear at the inquest and all that, and letting it be known about her and me,--

"Where were you the night that Barker was killed?" I asked abruptly. The man looked honest, there was an honest ring in his voice,--but suppose that after all I had the real murderer here in my office, covering his trail with palaver? Fellows\' eyes were on the floor.

"We went out to Lake Park on the electric, Min and me," he answered promptly. And then he added unnecessarily, "We went out on the seven o\'clock car and stayed there all evening."

"Now I know you are lying," I said coolly. "Minnie was at home a few minutes before seven. I saw her let Miss Benbow in."

"There\'s a lie somewhere, but I\'m not fathering it," Royce retorted hotly. "Miss Benbow was waiting in the back entry to be let in when we got there, and it was nearer three than two, because the power gave out and we were tied up for over two hours half way between here and the Park, waiting every minute to go on."

"Good heavens! Was Miss Benbow waiting outside till three in the morning?"

"Not outside,--in the back entry. It seems that she came home unexpected, and finding the house shut up, she waited, thinking of course Min would come home some time. And so she did. You see, everybody was away from home that evening, so Minnie was free. But Miss Benbow is a good sort all right. When Min said she\'d lose her place if Mrs. Crosswell found out about her going off, Miss Benbow said right off that she wouldn\'t tell."

I held down any adequate expression of my feelings. I merely asked, "What sort of a place is the back entry?"

"Oh, it was quite clean and nice," Minnie spoke up from the depths of her handkerchief. "There\'s an old rocking chair that I sit in to peel potatoes and things like that. She went to sleep in the old chair and didn\'t come to no harm. We leave the entry unlocked so that the iceman can get at the refrigerator in the morning."

The thought of Jean cooped up in that dark back entry until three in the morning, even admitting the comfort of the old rocking chair, was sufficiently disturbing, but aside from that there was something perplexing about the story. Somehow it did not fit in with my previous idea of the events of that night. I struggled to fix the discrepancy.

"How about Mr. Benbow?" I asked Minnie suddenly. "You told me you saw him leave the house."

"I did!"

"When? If you were away from the house before seven,--"

"It was just as I was taking Min back home,--a little before three," Royce interrupted. "Just as we were going along the side of the house, past the room Min said was the library, the door opened, and Mr. Benbow came out and ran down the steps. Min didn\'t want him to see her, so we stood still in the shadow till he was in the street. Then we went on to the back of the house."

"You gave me to understand that it was earlier in the evening," I said reproachfully.

"I didn\'t say when," she murmured miserably. "And I couldn\'t tell you it was at three o\'clock, or it would all have come out! And it is nobody\'s business, anyhow. I wish I had never answered that advertisement of yours!"

Fellows stirred slightly and his eye met mine. I caught his hint not to frighten the timid Minnie if I wanted to get any information from her.

"Did you tell Miss Benbow that you had seen her brother leave the house at three?" I asked, to fill time.

"Not then," she said meekly. "I didn\'t think about it. I told her the other day."

"Well, now you know the whole story, and I guess Min and I will go," said Royce,--and this time I did not try to prevent his departure. "Min wanted me to come, because that young man was hanging around to make her tell about things, and she didn\'t know what she had ought to tell and what not. But there ain\'t nothing we need to be afraid of coming out, only Min hates to be in the papers."

"Good day," I said. "And thank you for coming." As the door closed behind them, I turned to Fellows.

"Follow them. Don\'t lose sight of him. I don\'t feel sure yet that he has told the truth. We may need him."

"All right," said Fellows. "I\'ve been having her watched for weeks to find out who her young man was. I just worked it out yesterday, and got them here five minutes before you came in."

"Well, make sure that we can locate him if necessary," I said. This was not the time to discuss his method of handling things.

The door had hardly swung shut behind him when it opened again and Barney stumped in,--an anxious-looking Barney.

"You\'re here! I missed you," he said.

"Barney, what is it?" I cried. To wait for him to put what he had to say into words seemed suddenly next to impossible.

"I don\'t know wot it is, sir, but it\'s trouble," he said doggedly. "She guv me a letter for ye, and here it is."

I tore it open, and behind the incoherent words I seemed to hear Jean\'s serious, appealing voice:

"DEAR MR. HILTON:--I just must write to you, because I couldn\'t bear it if you should ever think back and feel hurt because I hadn\'t. I can\'t tell you all about it, but I want you to remember that I have a reason, a very important reason, for what I am going to do. I can\'t explain, but it is on account of Gene. You will know afterwards what I mean.

"But there is one other thing I want to tell you. I have just found out that Minnie told you she saw Gene leave the house that night, as she was coming in. That is a mistake,--I didn\'t tell her so, because I didn\'t know what difference it might make. But Gene was fast asleep on the couch in the library when Minnie and I came into the house (and that was three o\'clock) so if she saw someone going off by the side door just before, it wasn\'t Gene. You see, it was this way. When I ran back to speak to the girl I thought was Minnie, I found it wasn\'t Minnie but a friend of hers who works in the next house, and she said Minnie had gone out but would be right back, so I went into the back entry and waited for her, because I wouldn\'t go to Mrs. Whyte\'s when she was having a party. And Minnie didn\'t come till three. When we got in I saw a light in the library, and I went in, and there was Gene asleep. I kissed him very softly but I didn\'t wake him up, because you know how boys are, wanting their sisters to be so awfully dignified. And though I was perfectly safe and comfortable waiting beside the refrigerator, it wasn\'t exactly dignified, and Minnie was scared to death about being found out. So I didn\'t wake Gene. And it has been a great comfort ever since to me to remember how peaceful he looked, because that shows he felt innocent in his mind and not with a guilty conscience to keep him awake like Lady Macbeth.

"I can\'t say anything more, because I have promised over and over again not to say a thing about the plan to save Gene, but I will just say this,--If you should happen to hear that I was married, will you please, please understand and believe that it was to help Gene, and that of course I must do anything for him.

"Yours faithfully" (a blot made it look like "tearfully"),

"Jean Benbow."

It was incoherent enough (except for the part about Gene, which I put aside in my mind to think out later,) but one thing seemed clear,--that she was married or about to be married, and that she had been lured into this madness by some delusion that in this way she was going to be able to help her brother. I glanced at the envelope. It had not been through the mails.

"When and where did you get this, Barney?"

"Yisterday, yer honor. She brought it to me herself. An\' she wanted to bind me by great oaths out of a book that I wouldn\'t give it to you till afther to-day had gone by. Sez I, How can I give it to him till he comes here, an\' his office man sez he won\'t be here for a week yet,--for I had been to find out on my own account,--God forgive me for deceivin\' the innocent."

"It wasn\'t her letter, then, that made you telegraph, if you only got it yesterday. Was there anything else?"

His eyes fell, and he shifted his weight on his crutch uneasily.

"I saw her cryin\' and I knew she was carryin\' sorrow," he said at last, defiantly.

"When? Where? Tell me everything, can\'t you? Did you know anything of her plan to be married? Do you know where she is?"

"I know only what I see,-............