Linked in Silence

by Gilbert Patten

 

Linked in
Silence

^by Gilbert Patten
Author of “The Price on His Head,” etc.

CHAPTER I.

Invisible Chains

Loafing along the east side of Water Street as he made his rounds, the night watchman flashed his lamp down the tinker's pot blackness of Ram Alley. Forewarned by some tutelar power, Singleton had flattened himself against the sagging wall of the nearest building. The ten-inch projection of a building a yard to his right shielded him from detection. For a moment or two the ash cans and refuse heaps of the alley were illumined by the white ray, and then the narrow channel that crooked down to the water front was choked again with inky darkness. When the unsuspecting watchman shuffled onward Singleton drew a breath of relief. Had he been discovered it would have forced him to abandon his resolution to kill Bronson to-night, and perhaps to-morrow he would have been too sick to put the miserable scoundrel out of the way.

This narrow escape left him shaking a little and cursing himself for his weakness. Almost at once, however, he began chuckling softly because he was so strong. At this very moment he was supposed to be in his room a mile away and chained, helpless, to his bed by malarial fever. He had fooled the overtasked nurse who had undertaken to care for him night and day when the attending doctor had found it impossible to supply a substitute. Doubtless she was sound asleep now, after having grown confident that he was sleeping and would sleep for several hours, following the cessation of an attack. If he could complete his deadly job and get back unseen to his bed before the nurse awoke no finger of accusation could ever be turned in his direction.

He listened a moment. It was well past midnight, and the town was quite still, save for a faint and faraway throbbing of music and distant sounds made by a night crew discharging coal from a barge at one of the docks. He was still burdened by the feeling that somebody or something had been following him, and again he attempted to cast it off or to accept it as an illusionary conceit of his fever-taxed brain.

Even in that dense darkness he had not much trouble in treading the twisting path along the alley, for he had followed it on many another dark night of other years when seeking a chance to “set in” with the gang of poker sharks that gathered often in the quiet room over McCurdy's speak-easy.

McCurdy's was closed now, thanks to the dry law, but there was a way to reach the room under the roof without going through the old saloon. Singleton found a narrow passage between two of the shabby buildings and slipped quietly along it until he came to the end and the door he sought. Then he used the key McCurdy had let him have six years ago; the key that had made him one of the trusted and favored few who hadn't been compelled to pass each time beneath the inspecting eyes of old McCurdy.

The lock clicked and the dry hinges whined. Inside, with the door closed behind him, Singleton stood at the foot of the first flight of steep and narrow stairs and feared that the drumlike beating of his heart would be heard by the faithless wretch above. Then, reassured by conviction that Bronson would be entranced by the potent spell of the poppy, Singleton boldly felt his way upward over the complaining stairs.

He had his pistol in his hand now, and he was glad that he had become quite cool and steady, for he wished to do the trick with a single shot. One shot, fired in the topmost room of that wretched building, supposed to be empty—who, if he heard it, could say whence the sound had come? Swift, sure work; that was the idea.

Beneath the old cardroom door there was a faint, yellowish streak of light. Singleton almost laughed aloud at sight of it. The man was there; there in his secret den, in the hide-out to which he had stolen away in answer to the irresistible call of a shameful soul-and-body-destroying vice. Faintly Singleton could smell the drug.

Unhesitatingly he slipped his key into the lock and flung the door open before him, ready to do the deed.

A suspended oil lamp—the old shaded lamp that had formerly hung above the card table—cast an impotent, smoke-filtered light over the room. A faint bluish haze filled the place. A sickening odor, heavy and cloying, slapped Singleton in the face.

Against the wall at the far side of the room was a crude bunk on which a man was stretched. His coat and vest were off and his white shirt was open, baring a lean and bony chest. He lay on his curved arm, sleeping fitfully and jabbering now and then at the fantastic visions conjured by the opium pipe that had fallen from his lips with his final pull at the last pill.

His jaws locked, Singleton stood with the pistol half lifted. The job promised to be far simpler and easier than he had hoped. With Bronson in this condition there would be no scene, no disturbance, no noise save that of the single death-dealing shot; and his imagination had pictured the doomed wretch, frightened and cringing, begging for mercy with his last breath.

Keeping his gaze upon the unconscious man, Singleton reached behind him and thrust the door shut. Then, vexed as he perceived that the hand holding the pistol was quivering, he strode toward the bunk. Not until his foot struck against the low stand on which were the needle dipper and lamp for cooking the poppy gum, the blaze wavering within the open-topped glass bell, did he stop. Now, by stooping a little, he could place the muzzle of the pistol against his intended victim.

But suddenly he found himself restrained by invisible chains. Before him lay a lying scoundrel, a degraded wretch who encumbered the earth and polluted it, yet Singleton now found to his surprise that he could not slay the unconscious man. Not even after he had sought to steel himself by thinking of Estelle—poor girl!—in an asylum for the demented.

Angered because of his seeming weakness, he bent, seized Bronson by the shoulder, shook him savagely. “Wake up, you dog!” he cried.

Awakening, Bronson squinted dully through contracted pupils at the disturbing figure looming over the bunk. “Don't do that,” he complained thickly. “Lemme 'lone. Go 'way.”

“Wake up here!” insisted Singleton, refusing to let the drugged man relax. “Look at me. Well, do you know who I am?”

“Sure—sure I know,” was the answer, as Bronson struggled against the spell of the drug. “You're Jim—Jim Singleton. What you want? What—what you doing here?”

Singleton held the pistol before the heavy-lidded eyes of the man on the bunk. “I came to kill you, Bronson,” he replied.

Even this failed to arouse the fellow at once. Mouth agape, he stared waveringly from beneath those leaden lids. He had changed greatly, most of that change having become apparent in the last year, during which the habit over which he had previously maintained some control had asserted its mastery more powerfully. His cheeks were thin and sunken and his whole body emaciated. There was a sickly leaden tone to his skin. He was little more than a pitiful wreck of the handsome chap he had once been.

Sudden revulsion smote Singleton. Was it possible he had even dreamed of slaying a human creature so weak and degraded? Why, he couldn't do it! In spite of the fellow's treachery, in spite of his beastly brutality to Estelle, who had been driven mad by such treatment, Singleton couldn't do it. He drew back, glowering sullenly at the wretch.

Bronson had lifted himself to his elbow. The words last spoken by Singleton were beginning to arouse the drug-dazed man to a hazy understanding of the situation. His gaze laboriously roved round the room and came back to the intruder with the pistol. Then, with an effort, he swung his stocking-clad feet to the floor and sat up.

“How'd you get in?” he demanded.

Singleton shook his head. “No, I can't do it,” he said, speaking to himself. “I didn't think I'd hesitate an instant, but now I can't do it. He ought to die, but I can't put him out of the way.”

Then Bronson laughed contemptuously in Singleton's face. “Didn't really expect a call from you to-night, Jim,” he said jeeringly. “Anyway, didn't suppose you'd know where to find me. Quite natural, this being a quiet, place I've fitted up for use when I want to get away from people and play with the pipe a while. Oh, they all know I hit the pipe—everybody in this one-horse hick town knows it now and is talking about it. What do I care? None of their business now, is it? I leave it to you,”

“No,” said Singleton, shaking his head again, “I don't have to do it. At this rate, he'll finish himself before long. He's little better than a dead man now.”

“You're a liar!” said Bronson. “I was never stronger and better in all my life. Who told you where to find me? And how did you get in? Oh, you've got a gat in your hand, have you? What you trying to do, frighten me? Why, you couldn't frighten me, not if you were a whole regiment instead of just one man. I won something while you were down in South America—oh, yes!”

“Poor girl!” said Singleton. “You stole my letters, kept them from reaching her, lied to her.”

Bronson sneered. “Lied! Why, I only told her about little Babette; little Babette, who nursed you when you caught malaria. You didn't keep your promise to marry her, did you?”

Sitting there and grinning in that derisively triumphant way, the fellow looked like a dead man already, with his leaden skin drawn tightly over his skull bones. And the fever, beginning to rise again, caused odd fancies to flicker through Singleton's hot brain. It was a remarkable experience, this coming into the old cardroom over MecCurdy's and finding a dead man there who could move and talk and laugh!

“Lie down and be still, Bronson,” he said. “You're not behaving right for a dead man.”

The hideous grin faded from Bronson's face. His eyes, with the pinpoint pupils, turned again to the pistol in Singleton's hand, became warning semaphores.

“Oh-ho!” he said. “I guess you do really mean to kill me. I thought at first you were just trying to scare me, but—— Well, I won't lie down! I'm as good a man as you are—yes, better, better! I've proved it. Get out of here or I'll lay your head open!”

With a tinkle of broken glass the spirit lamp went to the floor as he grabbed a leg of the small stand and leaped up, swinging it above his head. Singleton dodged aside to avoid the blow needlessly. The stand fell from Bronson's suddenly relaxed fingers, thudding down near the broken lamp, the small flame of which still flickered bluely. An expression of surprise came over Bronson's face. His legs seemed to melt beneath him, letting him down beside the bunk in a sprawling, grotesque huddle.

CHAPTER II.

Delirium or Reality.

After standing like a statue for a few long moments, Singleton dragged his gaze from the fallen figure of Bronson and stared at the pistol, which he held gripped tightly and lifted, Although he believed he hadn't fired a shot, he would not have been greatly surprised had he perceived a wisp of smoke curling upward from the muzzle of the weapon.

His next action was to extinguish the flame of the broken spirit lamp before it could set the place afire. That done, he turned again to the twisted figure beside the bunk. Once more grasping Bronson's shoulder, he rolled him over until the hanging lamp showered its yellow light upon his face. The expression of questioning surprise was already congealing on the man's features and in his staring eyes. In the very center of his forehead was a hole from which the life fluid was oozing.

Kneeling there beside the body, Singleton stared unbelievingly at that hole. Not only had he assured himself that he hadn't fired, he had heard no sound of a shot. Yet here before him lay this man with a bullet in his brain!

Once more Singleton was chained by a spell. Astonishment benumbing him, he remained some seconds in that kneeling posture, gazing in utter incredulity at that death wound in the center of the man's forehead. “This is a delusion of the fever,” he whispered presently. He put out his hand and touched the body again, then he stood up, shivering. He gazed wildly around the room, asking himself whence the death-dealing lead had come. There were shadows in the corners, but nowhere amid them could the slayer of Bronson be hiding. There was likewise a closet, as Singleton remembered, and in a moment, still with the pistol in his hand, he had it open. Save for the old collapsible stepladder, provided by McCurdy for the escape of the card players to the roof by way of the skylight in case of a police raid, the closet was empty. He made himself absolutely sure of this before reclosing the door.

Leaning against that door, he tried to steady himself, to think clearly, to hold at bay the panic that was seeking to grapple with him. The man he had meant to kill when he came there had been slain before his eyes and almost within reach of his outstretched hand in a manner astounding and unaccountable. Either that, Singleton told himself, or he was due to awaken and find that the whole affair from beginning to end was mere calenture.

Dizziness crept upon him, accompanied by a threat of weakness such as had chained him to his bed, attended by a physician and a nurse. Fear that he would succumb before he could get back to that bed caused him to pull himself together and stagger hastily toward the door by which he had gained admission to that room. When he had swung the door open again and stepped over the sill he turned, before fully shutting it behind him, and took one more look at the dead man.

While he had come almost to believe that he was again in the net of a tormenting, fever-born dream, still all was so distinct, so realistic, so clear cut, that the sense of actuality predominated. Nevertheless, he seemed to remember other dreams of an equally vivid nature in which everything beheld had stood forth with cameo distinctness; in which he had looked upon strange faces whose features he afterward was able to recall more clearly than he could the features of well-known persons whom he met daily. Yet in the strange experiences of this night there was one thing which all his dreams had lacked—continuity. From the moment that, spurred by sharp desire to kill Bronson, he had risen surreptitiously from his bed—from that moment to this, as he paused in retreat upon the threshold of that room of tragedy, turning to take another look at the dead man, there had been nothing but sequential action. No skips and breaks, no magical transitions, no blank spots.

And there lay Bronson, dead, a dark ooze trickling down over his left eyebrow and temple. Dropping the pistol into his pocket, Singleton shut off the spectacle and the yellowish light of the suspended lamp by closing the door. In pitch darkness he began to descend the stairs.

He stopped, every nerve in his body wrenched still more taut as though by the brutal twist of a thumb screw. Mouth open, he listened, and heard a hand fumbling at the lower door, the door by which he had entered from the narrow passage leading to Ram Alley. Somebody was trying to open that door!

For a moment Singleton felt an impulse to plunge blindly downward and fling his strength against the door to hold the unknown back. Or, if the person had gained admittance by the time the descent could be accomplished, to attack him, strike him down, and rush onward to safety. Otherwise would he not be caught in a deadly trap?

Refusing to yield to panic, he remembered McCurdy's provision for the escape of the card players in case the place should be raided. Turning on the stairs, he hurried back to the room he had left only a few moments ago.

There were two heavy inside bolts on the door to that room, but neither of them had been used in a long time, and they were almost immovable in rust. Yet Singleton succeeded in forcing both of them into their sockets. Together with the spring lock, they would resist until the thick door itself should be battered down.

Panting, he brought the collapsible stepladder out of the closet, opened it, and placed it beneath the skylight, which was raised some eighteen inches above the level of the roof in which it was set. There was a great hammering in his head as he mounted the ladder, to which he was compelled to cling tightly to prevent himself from being toppled from it by the swiftly growing giddiness. He was afraid he wouldn't have sufficient strength to hoist himself out upon the roof after the skylight was opened.

When he could stand up and release the iron hooks, he managed to raise the window and fasten it open with the attached rachet iron. After a few moments he found himself kneeling beside the skylight on the tin-covered roof, greedily gulping the night air into his heaving lungs.

In that position he could look down into the room and see the door by which he had entered, and he vainly listened a moment for some sound which would denote that the unknown from whom he had fled was outside that door. What he heard were the noises made by the hoisting engine and the night laborers engaged in unloading a coal barge at a distant dock, and faint, faraway strains of dance music, coming from the opposite direction.

By leaning forward, he could see the feet and legs of the dead man, but not the upper part of his body. The bunk at that side of the room was shut off from view by the eighteen-inch rise of the skylight well.

Releasing the notched iron, Singleton lowered the window. But when he had closed it he took a last squint through the dirt-incrusted panes at the locked and bolted door to the room of silent death. There was still no indication that anybody was trying to obtain admission that way.

From the roof of the building to which he had mounted Singleton was now compelled to climb some four feet to reach the roof of another building that thrust a corner against it, and over that higher roof he must pass to still another before he could descend. He knew the way, but it was necessary to proceed with care in that intense blackness. He was obliged to muster the last particle of his wasted strength to perform that climb, and when he was on the higher roof he went reeling blindly through the darkness, not at all sure he was going in the right direction.

“I'll never be able to make it,” he muttered through his set teeth, thinking of his bed a mile away.

Then, stumbling, he pitched headlong over the coping, flinging out his arms in a desperate effort to save himself. He did not cry out as he fell. One short gasp of fright was all that came from his lips. He felt a crashing shock and beheld a bursting flare of bright light, which faded immediately into darkness.

CHAPTER III.

By the Great White Beam.

Soft, cool hands touched Singleton's face, and the voice of a woman, choked and trembling with alarm, sounded in his ears. He was lying prone upon his back and gazing uncomprehendingly at a huge moving bar of white light that swung across the pall-black sky as though striving to sweep the inky shadows away. Although the light was incomprehensible to him in his dazed condition, he was certain there was something familiar about the voice of the woman, and he weakly tried to remember when and where he had heard it before. In spite of the darkness he seemed to see a white form kneeling beside him.

“Who—who are you?” It cost him a tremendous effort to whisper the question.

With a startled exclamation, in which, however, there was undoubted relief, the dim white figure drew back.

“Oh, he isn't dead!”

Then Singleton heard another voice, a man's, harsh and tense. “Of course not,” it said. “A little three-foot fall like that wouldn't do him much damage. Come on away before you get mixed up in this miserable affair.”

“Oh, we can't beat it and leave him here like this. He must be hurt some.”

“You're coming away right now!”

A scuffle followed.

By a great effort Singleton managed to turn and lift himself upon one elbow. Then the huge beam of white light came down from the upper blackness and played full upon two struggling figures only a few feet from him. And there he saw a fairylike creature, whose garments of gauzy white shimmered with silver and gold, battling desperately with a scarlet-clad figure who was trying to drag her away.

In the fleeting moment or two that the light lingered on those figures Singleton was impressed by the ridiculous fancy that he was looking upon a combat for his soul: a contention between good and bad, between an angel and Satan himself, for the immortal soul of the helpless human spectator of the encounter, And, being stronger, the Evil One was winning. This he saw ere the white beam fled away, leaving darkness triumphant.

In that darkness Singleton lay prone again, striving to regain his strength and collect his scattered wits in spite of the beating of a massive hammer in his brain. When, by another effort, he had succeeded in rising to a sitting posture he saw what appeared to be countless fallen stars which seemed to stand on sentry duty in long rows extending into dim distances, where they waned and faded from view. After a time, however, he concluded that those stars were rows of lamps glowing along the branching streets of the silent town; and, that being true, he knew he had fallen no farther than a few feet from the higher roof to the roof of the building he had been trying to reach.

His extended hand found the wall of that higher building. He managed to get upon his feet and lean against the coping of that wall, again asking himself what portion of his strange experiences had been phantom and what reality. Having been stunned by his recent fall and rendered unconscious for a time more or less protracted, he was willing to accept the struggle between Satan and the angel as pure delusion. And then the roaming searchlight from a large yacht in the harbor smote him blindingly in the eyes and passed on, leaving him still further perplexed.

“That,” he told himself, “was the light by which I saw them tussling, and if that is real why not they?”

This, however, was no time or place for him to linger over such speculations. As soon as he felt he had regained sufficient strength he sought cautiously in the darkness for the scuttle through which he meant to descend. In the old days the gamblers trusted by “Spider” McCurdy knew the secret of opening that scuttle from the roof as well as from the lower side. But now, when Singleton finally found it by creeping about on all fours, after being again dazzled and blinded by the persistent searchlight, the scuttle had been left wide open, as though the last to use it had been in too great hurry to close it again.

Singleton went down the steep and narrow steps beneath the scuttle and felt for the upper flight of stairs. Fortunately he knew where to find them, for not even the faintest light burned in the halls of the cheap tenement building through which he must make his descent. He could hear the snoring of sleepers, and from some room came the feeble fretting of a baby, but no person save Singleton seemed to be astir in the building.

Like the scuttle, the entrance door at the foot of the lower stairs stood wide open, an apparent sign of haste or carelessness by the last person who had used it.

The street was poorly lighted, and Singleton willingly hugged the shadows. He made a detour that enabled him to avoid that portion of the town that was well illumined. By following side streets and back ways without being observed, he came at last to the street on which he lived. In his head the hammer was still beating, but he was not a little elated because his strength had sustained him, and precautions and good fortune had made it possible for him to traverse those streets without encountering a human soul. And then, forty feet from his own door and in the full flood of a lamp that couldn't be avoided, he came face to face with his most rancorous enemy, who was the special friend of Tom Bronson.

Dave Mygart came out from beneath a tree against which he had been leaning in such a position that he was hidden by the shadow of the tree trunk. He stepped directly into Singleton's path. “I beg pardon,” he said. “Could you give me a match?” He had a cigarette in his fingers, and his manner and speech seemed to pronounce him somewhat intoxicated.

Singleton stopped in his tracks, holding himself as steady as possible, endeavoring to look Mygart in the eyes without flinching. Against this man Singleton had been compelled to give testimony once that had brought upon Mygart the infliction of severe punishment, which was something the fellow had never forgotten or forgiven. He had made a vow to pay Singleton back some day with interest.

A yard or two away, Mygart became rooted, staring at Singleton as though he couldn't quite accept the evidence of his eyes. “Why,” he said, “I thought you were down flat with a bad attack of malaria fever, Singleton. Well, now, what are you doing, roaming around town at this hour of the night?”

Aware of his weakness and fearing his voice would betray it, Singleton did not answer. Instead, standing straight and steady, he continued to drill Mygart with his stare. He wasn't aware that his face was frightfully transformed by the fever flush and the effect of his almost superhuman exertions. Nor did he know that there was a fearsome glitter in his eyes and a wolfish expression in the way his lips were curled back from his white teeth.

As the two men stood thus for a few moments in dead silence, a light breeze, coming from afar, brought a faint sound of dance music on its bosom and set the leaves of the tree rustling like the frightened, fleeing patter o phantom feet.

“Well, what are you trying to do?” queried Mygart presently. “Got a notion you can scare me by glaring like that?”

But when Singleton continued speechless and stony Mygart began to fly signals of linked anger and alarm. Apparently without realizing he was doing so, he started to draw back. Not even the false courage that comes from drink could steady his nerve so that he could stand up to Jim Singleton when the man looked as he did now. For Mygart was in truth a swaggering coward, dangerous as a copperhead, but dangerous only when he struck without warning.

So presently, flinging a snarled curse at Singleton, he wheeled about and went striding away like a person on the verge of breaking into a run.

Singleton's latchkey let him into the house where he lived. It was a heart-breaking task to climb to his chamber, and as he dragged himself upward he was compelled to stop on each stair to rest. His heaving lungs made his breath whistle in his throat until he feared the sound would awaken every deeper beneath that roof. The hinges of his chamber door gave a mouselike squeak, but at last he was in the room. One shaded bulb was burning dimly, and the door to the room in which he had left his sleeping nurse was still ajar barely an inch or two. Through an open window came the sound of a distant clock, striking two.

Praying for a little more strength, he managed to undress and put his clothes away carefully in his wardrobe, His pistol was returned to its leather holster and tucked into the dresser drawer from which he had taken it. Getting into his pajamas, he crawled between the sheets, smothering a groan of triumphant relief.

CHAPTER IV.

Deception and Fear.

Again he awoke with the touch of a soft, cool hand upon his face. The white-capped nurse drew back quietly as he opened his eyes and looked up at her. She had the features of a saint. Her eyes were like limpid pools which a sad autumn sky was reflected.

The night had passed and the morning sun was sifting its gold in beneath loww-drawn window shades.

“I saw you struggling to save my soul,” said Singleton, “but the devil dragged you away. How did you escape from his clutches?”

“You've been dreaming,” she told him soothingly.

“I saw you when the great white beam swept the black sky,” he insisted. “You were all in white and your garments gleamed with spots of silver and gold. But the devil came and dragged you away.”

“Hush!” she said. “Be quiet and rest. You're better now.”

It vexed him. He could see her looking at him sympathizingly, and he wondered that he had never before realized how tender and beautiful she was. Again her slim, cool fingers lightly touched his forehead, and that brought a smile to his lips.

“There on that roof, in pitch darkness, your fingers touched me so,” he declared. “I thought your voice sounded familiar, but it is strange I didn't recognize it instantly. Yet you know I believed you were asleep here in the next room. I didn't suspect you had left this house, thinking I would sleep soundly until you returned.”

Now she was astounded and disturbed. He saw her start and draw back, her eyes widening. She stared at him in uncertainty, and he was sure she trembled like a frightened bird.

“Don't be afraid,” he entreated. “If you don't want people to know about it, have no fear I'll tell.”

“I—I don't know what you mean,” she faltered. “It's the fever. You've been dreaming again.”

“There were times,” he admitted, “when I wasn't sure—when I thought it might be a dream; but if the scoundrel is found dead, with a bullet in his brain, I shall know it was not a dream. Yet how can it be he was shot there in that wretched room when I didn't do it—shot before my very eyes, though I heard no pistol fired and he and I were the only persons in the room?”

“You mustn't talk!” she exclaimed, apparently almost in a panic.

He smiled again, “I'm not afraid to talk to you. Why should I be? You are sympathy and truth. I'm sure you thought me fast asleep when Doctor Carver told you last night how Bronson had vanished again and it was supposed he had hidden himself away to indulge in his vice of opium smoking. I knew where he went to hide at such times. Poor Estelle! I thought of her in a madhouse, and then I decided that Bronson should die before another day. So I went to that room to kill him, and he is dead, but I didn't do it.”

The white-capped nurse seemed speechless.

“He was a very bad man,” added Singleton, “and he deserved to die.”

“Oh, yes, he's bad, he's bad!” exclaimed the nurse, seeming to lose control of herself for a moment. “Not many know how very bad he is. And you're right, he deserves to die.”

“He is dead,” said the sick man. “They will find him in McCurdy's old cardroom with a bullet in his brain. But how that bullet got there and who fired it I can't imagine.”

She shook her head. “Lie still!” she urged. “I'll give you some medicine, and you must also take some broth and the juice of an orange. The doctor is coming by and by, and I wouldn't like to have him find you needlessly excited and worn out. Please stop talking about your dreams.”

“All right,” he agreed. “I shall do as you wish me to, because it is your wish. But after they have found him you will know I was speaking of things which actually happened.'

After she had taken his temperature he swallowed the medicine she gave him. Later he took some broth and the juice of an orange. Then he lay still, feeling quite calm and contented, while she cared for him.

How capable she was. How systematically she went about her duties, making no wasted moves, accomplishing things with the least effort needed. Yet he fancied she looked wearied and nervous this morning, and he could see that the soft tint of health which had been in her cheeks only yesterday was now absent. And there were times when he was sure he saw her hands tremble slightly. Once, when there was a noise somewhere in the house like the sudden banging of a door, she started, caught her breath, and stood as still as stone, listening.

More than once Singleton saw her eyes turn toward him questioningly, while a little wrinkle of perplexity marred the smoothness of her forehead. Nervousness and anxiety appeared to beset her. Presently she sat beside the bed, and he waited for the question he was sure she would ask.

“What led you to imagine I left this house last night, Mr. Singleton?” she finally said in a low tone, her face partly averted.

Once more he smiled. “It wasn't until a short time ago that I knew,” was his reply. “The touch of your fingers on my face brought the truth to me all at once. Immediately I realized that they were the same fingers I had felt touching me so in the darkness after my fall on the roof. In the moment or two that the white light shone upon you as you struggled with the devil I did not see your face, which was turned away. But I had heard your voice saying I must be hurt, and I wanted to hear you speak again a little while ago. The moment you did, so there was no longer a doubt. I'll admit I can't understand why you went there on the roof and dressed all in white that shimmered with gold and silver, but you were surely there.”

She shook her head at him. “Your dreams made you tired,” she said, “and the fever came up again. But it's subsiding now.”

“It was getting home after Bronson was killed that made me tired,” he declared. “Seems to me I ran into Mygart just outside the door to this house, but I'm not sure about that.”

“Dave Mygart!” she exclaimed, shivering. “That man around here! Oh, he's as bad as Tom Bronson!”

He wondered at her sudden agitation. Seeing his puzzled eyes fixed upon her, she quickly recaptured self-control.

“But Mygart is a coward,” said Singleton. “He was branded a coward some time ago.”

“And he blamed you for that.”

How was it she knew so much about this matter and about Bronson and Mygart, having but lately come, a complete stranger, to Spearfield? That question wedged itself into his mind and annoyed him. Suddenly he asked her, and she was startled. Her attempt to cover her confusion gave her a guilty look, and it made him wonder.

“Why, I—really I don't know much about them,” she averred lamely. “I've just heard people talking about them, that's all. They are very friendly, I understand.”

“As thick as two thieves,” allowed Singleton. “I presume you got much of your information from Doctor Carver? You asked him a lot of questions about Bronson.”

“For a man as ill as you appeared to be you have missed very little,” she told him a trifle testily. “I didn't suppose you were in condition to take so much notice.”

“I have good reasons to take notice when Bronson is mentioned,” he retorted. “I've contemplated killing him for a long time, but somebody or some mysterious power did it for me.”

She looked as though she thought him still somewhat delirious, but he had begun to have a feeling that she was playing a part, and that made him resentful, so that he suddenly fell silent. And again uncertainty crept into his mind, making him willing to admit to himself that he wasn't positive the bizarre happenings which he seemed to recall were anything more than fever-born illusions. Also something made him realize that everything he had said had sounded like the maundering of a person with an unbalanced mind.

When he fell asleep he did not know, but when he once more awoke it was to hear the nurse and the doctor talking. Without opening his eyes, or doing anything to make them aware he was awake, he listened.

“Less than two hours ago,” the doctor was saying, “his brother, Charles Bronson, who is the postmaster here, was determined to find him. He went to that fellow Mygart, and Mygart took him to a room on the top floor of an old building in an alley, where there used to be a low gin mill. Tom Bronson had been using the room for a long time as a hide-out when he wanted to smoke opium, and they found him there—stone dead.”

Singleton heard Miss Chester catch her breath. “Oh, doctor!” she exclaimed, her voice choking a little. “Dead! How——”

“I understand everything indicates he was murdered. He had been shot in the center of the forehead.”

Another little gasp came from the nurse, and Singleton imagined that she turned her head quickly and looked toward the bed. He pictured her as galvanized by doubt and wonderment.

“Who—who killed him, doctor?”

Her voice was so hoarse and unsteady, so burdened with alarm and distress, that it seemed wholly unnatural. It caused Singleton to open his eyes cautiously, and he saw her standing several feet away, her hands pressed together, her body tense, her face as gray as sea fog. She was gazing appealingly at the doctor, who faced her within arm's reach.

“That's a mystery, Miss Chester,” answered the young physician. “It's a very strange affair, and one of the remarkable features about it is that the only door to that room was locked and bolted—on the inside.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the nurse. “Oh, then perhaps—perhaps he committed suicide.”

“That seems impossible. They raked the place over and failed to find a pistol or any sort of deadly weapon in the room. Furthermore, there appeared to be some indications of a struggle, and there was a tall stepladder beneath the skylight, through which the murderer doubtless left the place, making his escape over the roofs.”

Slowly the nurse brought up one clenched hand until it was pressed against her lips, and her body, swaying backward at the hips, was as tense as a strung bow. In her widened eyes the torch of fear was shining. Her voice was low and husky, scarcely more than a rasping whisper, as she asked: “Has anybody any idea who—who killed him?”

“Oh, of course people are guessing. And it's reported that his demented wife escaped from the asylum day before yesterday and hasn't been found. I think I told you how she shrieked and raved when she realized he had caused her to be committed to that institution, and she declared she would kill him if she ever got out. Well, there's a rumor that a mysterious woman, wearing a long black cloak with a hood, was seen in that part of the town after midnight last night—— Why, Miss Chester!”

With a quick movement he caught the swaying white-gowned figure. For a moment or two she seemed to lie inert in his arms, and the sick man, who was watching this scene, felt a sudden stab of jealousy—which astounded him.

“There, there, Miss Chester!” said the physician soothingly, his face perplexed. “I wouldn't have told you anything about this singular tragedy if you hadn't asked questions. You're overworked and nervous.”

When he started to assist her to a chair she detached herself from his support. “Don't—don't mind me, doctor,” she pleaded. “I'm all right, really I am.”

“You must have had another bad night.”

“Oh—oh, quite the contrary. You will see by the chart that Mr. Singleton slept almost all night long, and I really caught a little sleep myself in the big chair there beside the bed. It wasn't until nearly three o'clock that his fever rose again and he was somewhat delirious.”

“But didn't you get a chance to lie down at all, Miss Chester?”

“Oh, I suppose I might, but I didn't do so. I didn't leave this room.”

“Too bad I can't get you an assistant, but his fever should break and leave him for good in a little over three days now.”

Then Singleton pretended to awaken, and Miss Chester called the doctors attention to him as he moved and muttered. The physician took the sick man's pulse, examined the nurse's chart, told Singleton he was doing very well, and prepared to depart. The nurse followed him outside the door, where they exchanged a few low words, not a little to the disturbance of the man in bed, who was again surprised by jealous twinges.

“I'm sorry you had to sit here by the bed and watch me all last night, Miss Chester,” said Singleton when she had returned to him.

She flashed him a wild look, her eyes wide, the torch of fear flaming high again. “You were asleep,” she declared in a voice so harsh that he was amazed. “When you weren't asleep you were delirious. You don't know what I did.”

“Then I suppose,” he returned, “that I was delirious when I told you a while ago that Tom Bronson had been shot in that room?”

In a flash she was bending over the bed, her soft fingers, now cold and trembling, pressed against his lips.

“Oh, hush, hush!” she pleaded. “Don't talk about that! Sleep—sleep and forget! If it wasn't a remarkable dream, then it was second sight or something of that sort.”

He kissed her fingers and smiled at her when she quickly drew them away.

“If there is any reason why you wish me to forget,” he told her, “you may be sure I shall not remember.”

CHAPTER V.

Through the Wall.

But, though he made a pretense of it, he couldn't sleep. Yet, realizing it was unwise to perplex himself over vexing things which he couldn't understand, he failed to bar them from his muddled brain. Two questions kept nagging him: What had been the cause of Miss Chester's extreme emotion while discussing the tragedy with Doctor Carver? And why had she deceived the doctor with a false chart and told him an untruth regarding the manner in which she had passed the previous night?

He meditated confusedly upon the twinge of jealousy that had struck him when he saw the young doctor catch and hold the reeling girl in his arms. “Am I in love with Miss Chester?” he asked himself. And immediately he decided that he had become foolishly sentimental over a pretty nurse, like thousands of ill men before him.

Aware that she seemed to be waiting with masked impatience for something, he presently began to breathe slowly and heavily, letting his mouth fall open a bit, like a person in deep slumber. And then, through his eyelashes, he saw her rise and slip from the room with the silence of a soft breeze. She went into the adjoining room—the one in which he had thought her sleeping last night when he crept out of the house—and fully closed the door behind her, taking great care and much time to do it noiselessly.

At once Singleton tested his strength to learn if it would let him get up, and was surprised to find himself quite strong, although a little unsteady in his movements. He rose, making about as much noise as a mouse, and went to his dresser, where he opened the drawer in which he had stowed his pistol, an army .45. Taking out the weapon, he examined the magazine and found it contained nine loaded shells. A single shot had been fired from the ten cartridges, but he could not remember having fired that shot!

For a few moments he stared at the weapon in utter dismay. Presently he whispered: “Then I must have shot Bronson without realizing I did so!” And he concluded that he had fired when the fellow had lifted the small stand to strike at him. He told himself that a man in the grip of fever and overwrought by excitement and anger might neither hear the report of the weapon nor realize that he had pulled the trigger.

This did not seem utterly impossible when he considered the singular experience which had followed upon the roof. But he didn't wish to think about that now, for it confused him. He swabbed out the pistol, slipped a loaded shell into the magazine, and wiped the weapon off carefully before returning it to its holster and stowing it away in the drawer. Then he tottered back to bed.

Now, if suspicion turned in his direction—and, recalling his meeting with Mygart near the tree, he felt that it might—at least the pistol wouldn't give evidence that one shot had recently been fired from it.

Not for a moment did he worry over the possibility that Miss Chester would betray him. Something made him confident that the third degree could not unseal her lips.

How different she was from Estelle! Estelle he had known since her pigtail days, and their engagement had followed a boy-and-girl love affair. Only for a sentimental moonlight excursion just before he went away to South America he might never have asked Estelle to marry him. In fact, he was almost sure he would not have done so.

However, having entered into such a compact, Singleton was the sort of man to keep his word. Babette Cornu, the little girl who had nursed him when he had caught the malaria, had been really charming, and doubtless he had said as much in a letter to some friend in America, but there hadn't been an affair of even the slightest seriousness between them. That had been manufactured in Bronson's imagination to aid him in estranging Estelle.

Tom Bronson had been a fellow of many sweethearts, and his early won reputation for brutality to the fair sex had seemed to attract girls rather than repel them. His expulsion from college had followed a disgraceful quarrel with a woman who had caused his arrest. Later, Charles Bronson, Tom's brother and twelve years his senior, had sent him to California, urging him to get into business of some sort out there. But after a year, the greater part of which was spent in and around Los Angeles, Tom came back. In that he had contracted the opium habit, but that fact he kept hidden for a long time.

It was after his return to Spearfield that he became friendly with Dave Mygart, who was something of a roughneck; a fellow of low breeding, cheap instincts, and a coward. He hated Singleton, who had given evidence once against him.

Tom Bronson, having passed a civil service examination after his return from California, obtained a clerkship in the Spearfield post office, where his brother was postmaster. His position made it possible for him to intercept Singleton's letters to Estelle Halford and likewise many of those she wrote to him. So by theft and tricks and falsehoods he succeeded in destroying the girl's confidence in the man to whom she was engaged. Estelle finally married Bronson, soon to realize her mistake and regret it in bitterness and tears. Never a very strong-minded person, she eventually betrayed pronounced signs of mental derangement. At her husband's instigation, she was given an examination for her sanity and regularly consigned to the State lunatic asylum

Now, according to Doctor Carver, there was a report that she had escaped from that institution, and, of course, as she had wildly threatened to kill her husband, some persons might believe that there were good reasons to think she had succeeded in keeping the threat. But Singleton, who had seen Bronson pass over, was now quite sure that he had killed the man in that room of secret vice.

But in what manner was Miss Chester involved in this tragedy? And if not involved what had been the cause of her agitation while talking about the affair with Doctor Carver? Again Singleton's mind reverted to her, and, lying there in a hazy, trancelike condition he turned his eyes toward the wall of the room into which she had gone and was surprised to discover that he could see through that wall quite as though it had not existed.

Almost immediately, however, he forgot to be surprised, and was keenly interested in watching the nurse. She was kneeling before a low couch, and on her face there was an expression of intense terror. It gave him a feeling of great sympathy and longing to protect her from whatever thing it was that had awakened such distressing fear in her heart.

Then he heard her whisper, “No, no, I can't hide it here!” and saw her thrust her hands beneath the couch and draw forth a long black cloak to which a hood was attached. With that somber garment in her hands she went round and round the room, wildly searching for some place where she could conceal it, but finding none to her liking.

As Singleton watched, a misty cloud thickened before his eyes and she was lost in the midst of it. With the thickening of that cloud his trancelike condition passed, and he found himself gazing at the solid wall of the room, which was no longer as transparent as glass.

“Oh, this cursed fever!” he muttered angrily, “It's fixed me so I don't know whether I see things or not. I'm dog tired and must sleep.”

CHAPTER VI.

With Apache Cruelty.

Singleton lay gazing dully at the stout, middle-aged woman who sat near the bed in Miss Chester's chair. Presently he realized that the woman was Mrs. McMorrow, his landlady. In spite of the confusion that filled his mind he knew something was wrong; for Mrs. McMorrow was a busy woman about the house, and since the fever had made it necessary for him to have a nurse the landlady had merely glanced upon him at rare intervals. Now, as she perceived that his eyes were open and turned upon her, she uttered an exclamation.

“Glory be!” she said. “It's time ye was waking up to take your medicine, which you should had half an hour ago, but I done as your nurse said and let ye slape as long as ye slept quiet without groaning too hard.”

“The nurse,” said Singleton weakly after he had swallowed the bitter stuff she held to his lips. “Where is she?”

“Now do ye want to kill the poor crature by kaping her in this chamber every minute of the time, night and day?” demanded Mrs. McMorrow reprovingly. “It's a taste of air she must get once in a while, as well as a little slape, or she'll be breaking down and never see ye through it at all.”

“Oh, yes,” he agreed, “that's true, Mrs. McMorrow, and I'm trying not to be any more trouble than necessary. I'm really not very sick, you know. Why, I could get up now if I wanted to.”

Endeavoring to prove this assertion, he attempted to sit up in bed, but fell back limply before he had lifted his head a foot from the pillow, everything swimming around him in a sickening fashion.

“It's the strength of a fall fly ye have,” declared the landlady, bending over the bed. “Now don't get foolish and try any more of that. Let me fix ye comfortable on a cool pillow, lad.”

When he seemed to be dozing again she rose quietly and went out of the room.

It was ten minutes later, perhaps, when he heard her speaking to somebody just outside the partly open door. “I dunno that I should permit it, but if ye say you're his friend and the doctor sent ye to see him—why, all right. It's weak he is and scarce able to turn his head on the pillow, and ye might take care not to make the poor lad worse by exciting him.”

“Don't worry about that, madam,” said the voice of Dave Mygart. “It will do him good to see me for a few moments. Just leave us alone a little while, please.”

Following this Mrs. McMorrow was so profuse with her thanks that Singleton was sure her palm had been well greased.

Mygart came in boldly and closed the door behind him. With a sneering smile on his face, he walked toward the bed. “Howdy, Singleton?” was his greeting. “You don't appear to be quite as active as you were when I saw you last. Perhaps your midnight stroll around town set you back some.”

“Mygart,” Singleton replied in impotent wrath, “you sure have your nerve with you.”

Continuing to smile in that insolent manner, the unwelcome visitor sat down on the chair beside the bed. “What's nervy about this?” he asked. “I wanted to chin a bit with you, and I improved the opportunity while your charming nurse was away. You see, I rather imagined you would stick pretty close to your bed and pretend to be devilish sick for the next few days. I'll say this is a lucky time for you to be helplessly ill. You're foxy, Singleton.”

“I'm sorry I'm not able to get up,” returned the fever-chained man; “for it would give me great pleasure to kick you downstairs, Mygart.”

“Oh, yes!” The other nodded, his vicious eyes overcharged with hate. “I haven't a doubt of it. You kicked me once as hard as you could. Call that a figure of speech, as what you did was worse than a kick; you gave me a brand that I'll have to carry the rest of my life. But you're going to pay dearly for that piece of business, Jim Singleton.”

He leaned forward, wagging his head and glaring with greenish eyes, seen through narrowed lid slits, at the man on the bed. Not only was his face cruel, there was something treacherous and repulsive about it. He reminded Singlton of a snake, a copperhead.

“You branded yourself by your own contemptible cowardice, Mygart. I merely told the truth about you.”

“You always tell the truth, do you, eh? Well, then, I suppose you'll be ready and willing to tell all about your ramble around town recently. You'll tell just what led you to get out of your bed—you, a man helplessly ill—and go prowling round the water front on the night that my friend Tom Bronson was bumped off in the old cardroom over McCurdy's, won't you? But of course you won't be able to attend the coroner's inquest, which takes place at two o'clock this afternoon, will you? You were quite able to be up and around last night, but it's different now, isn't it? Come now, Singleton, what are you going to do about it?”

Singleton knew what he longed to do, but his recent attempt to sit up made him believe he was chained to the bed—for the time being at least. His helplessness brought a groaning curse to his lips.

“That's merely the prelude to the music I want to hear from you,” said the man beside the bed. “I'm going to wring it out of you, too, you can bet on that. I'll make you sweat blood before I'm done with you, Singleton.”

“Coward to the marrow!” whispered the sick man hoarsely. “In this fashion you show what you are.”

As though he were steadying a pistol, Mygart rested his elbow on his knee and aimed a trigger at the other. “Who killed Tom Bronson?” he said, leaning forward menacingly.

With all the steadiness he could command Singleton met the fellow's accusing gaze. “Perhaps you know, Mygart,” he retorted.

“I think I do, and so do you. What was Miss Chester, your good-looking nurse, doing on the streets of this town last night between the hours of midnight and two in the morning? Why was she abroad alone, wearing a long black cloak with a hood?”

“Perhaps you know,” repeated Singleton. “Bah! Don't be a fool, Mygart! She wasn't out of this house last night. I'll swear to that,”

“Oh, ho, will you, now? So you'd swear to a lie on her account, would you? I had a notion you would be ready to do that. But how can you make oath to anything of the sort when you were on the streets yourself during those hours. And a suspicious-acting woman was seen on Edgeway Street, not far from Water, last night, a-wearing the sort of cloak I mentioned.”

“Who saw her?”

“Shillaber, the night watchman, for one. And I saw her myself. More than that, I pulled the hood of her cloak back beneath a street lamp and got a good look at her map. She was this slick nurse of yours, and, take it from me, she can run. I tried to chase her down Dock Street when she turned and scooted that way, but she gave me the slip quicker than a cat can wink her eye. It was after she dodged me that way that I came here and waited outside this house for her. And that's how I happened to see you out for your night ramble, Singleton. It was quite a surprise to both of us, meeting like that, wasn't it?”

“You're lying about Miss Chester,” said Singleton huskily.

“Oh, no—oh, no, I'm not. Listen. I've just come from Sheriff Hensen's office, and I left Miss Enid Chester—as she calls herself—in that office. At my suggestion, the sheriff stopped her as she was hurrying through town, carrying a rather large bundle that was snugly wrapped in heavy brown paper. After taking her into his office, Hensen opened the bundle and found a long black cloak. She was stubbornly refusing to tell what she was doing with that cloak when I left.”

Fear placed a sickening touch upon the man in the bed. “Cowardly!” he muttered. “Men browbeating a frightened woman—cowardly!”

“Oh, she was properly cautioned that anything she said might be used against her.”

“And then they did all they could to trap her into some sort of self-convicting admission. Cowardly!”

Mygart chuckled evilly. “Why, you're mightily concerned about her, you are! You're all shivering, but your face is ablaze. Do you know, I had a hunch you'd fall for her. Pretty nurses are your specialty, aren't they? There was Babette, too. Let me tell you now that it was through me your sweetheart here in Spearfield found out all about Babette. I had friends in South America that wised me up. Oh, I did my part to queer you with Miss Estelle Halford, Singleton.”

The fever was mounting in Singleton's veins. Swiftly it was setting him ablaze. A host of mad fancies were dancing in his churning brain. Striving to retain control of himself, he mumbled thickly: “No reason—no reason in the world why she should do it.”

“Now, is that so?” said Mygart. “How much do you know about this Miss Chester, anyhow? Practically nothing at all, eh? Well, I happen to know a few things about her. Bronson told me who she was. He knew why she came here to Spearfield, and he knew where she came from. She was out in California when he was there. Now listen. There was some sort of marriage ceremony, but it wasn't legal. The dame made quite a holler when she found out she wasn't properly tied up to Tom, but he was tired of her by that time, so he bought her off before he came back here. Oh, she took the money, all right. Well, once a man pays blackmail to a woman he's in trouble for fair. She has got him going, and she knows it. Then she decided after a lapse of time that she'd let a good thing slip through her fingers. But when she came on here to pull his leg some more she found, to her disappointment, that he didn't have much coin, so she threatened him and tried to scare him into getting it out of his brother. She talked about her honor and about shooting, and that sort of melodrama stuff. Well, he stood it for a while, and then he told her to go to the devil. Now he's a stiff, and it looks like she'll have to stand trial for murdering him.”

“A lie!” cried Singleton in a sudden burst of fury. “A dirty lie, concocted to blacken an innocent girl. I was watching you close, and I could see you patching the thing together as you went along. Just wait till I'm well again, Mygart!”

A silent, derisive laugh curled Mygart's thin lips. He snapped his fingers. “That's how much I care for your threat, Jim Singleton. And I see I was right in thinking you couldn't resist the charms of your latest pretty nurse.”

“I'd defend any woman slandered by a scoundrel.”

“Unless I'm mistaken, she'll need to be defended against something besides slander. I'd like to make a little bet that the coroner holds her for the murder of Bronson.”

“Never!” muttered Singleton through his set teeth.

Mygart lay back in the chair, his seamed face expressive of the great enjoyment he was finding in torturing the helpless man. He was working upon Singleton's emotions with all the cruel skill of an Apache Indian engaged in flaying a captive alive. A pointed tongue came out and licked at his lips.

“Oh, well,” he said, “you know how hard it is to convict a good-looking woman of murder. When she's brought to trial this one may get off through a disagreement of the jury. But her reputation will be gone. Whether or not she's convicted, the world will know her for what she is, an adventuress and a blackmailer.”

Singleton's hands were clenched on the white spread, and his panting breath made queer, jerky whistling sounds. His eyes, fastened on Mygart, burned like dull coals. For the moment he was dumb.

“She's got just one chance,” said the man beside the bed. “Just one chance to escape going through this trial, facing this disgrace. One person can prevent it, and only one.”

“Who?” whispered Singleton.

“You!” answered Mygart.

“I?”

“Yes.”

“How could I——”

“By telling the truth.” Mygart rose and stood over the bed, bending a little to glare straight into the sick man's eyes. “By confessing that you are the person who killed Tom Bronson!”

CHAPTER VII.

A Matter of Courage.

Toward this Mygart had been craftily edging all the while. He had played upon the sick man's feelings, harrowing them by degrees, until he was sure Singleton's nerves were raw and ready to snap from the strain. Then he had touched off the mine, standing to watch the effect.

Singleton seemed like a person paralyzed. Indeed, for some moments he was even more like a dead man, as he did not appear to breathe, and not even an eyelash flickered over his set eyes.

“That shot went home, didn't it?” exulted Mygart. “Oh, I knew it would! Of course you can keep still and let the girl go to a cell, let her be brought to trial for murder, if you want to. But you've always been such a gallant gentleman when a lady was in distress! And, believe me, this lady is going to be in some distress. That is, unles you fly to her rescue. But perhaps you can't fly. Well, if you decide to come clean by spilling the truth about the murder I'll do the flying for you. I'll see that your confession is taken down in the presence of witnesses, properly sworn to, and then that it reaches the hands of the coroner in time to receive due consideration.”

At last Singleton's lips fluttered as he drew a long, deep breath into his lungs. The reddish haze in which Mygart's evil face had been dimly swimming before his eyes dissolved and was gone. He imagined that he sensed the beginning of a great change that was coming over him. He spoke in a voice level and cold.

“You invented this slander about Miss Chester in order to lead me into your trap, Mygart. It is a foul lie from beginning to end.”

“Now, is that so? Then why is she being questioned in the sheriff's office right now? No, I'm not lying, Singleton, when I tell you that unless you prevent it by confessing your crime she'll have to face trial for murder. When the inquest is held this afternoon she will be put on the grill, and you are the only person who can prevent Alice Clayton, known in this town as Enid Chester, from being held for murder. You've called me a coward. Well, now we'll see what you are. Now we'll see if you are the sort of man to let a woman bear the stigma of a crime committed by you. We—you and I—will know how brave you are after it's all over.”

“Why do you think I killed Bronson?”

“Oh, I have excellent reasons for thinking so.”

“What are they?”

Mygart laughed derisively. “So you're trying to find out how much of it's guesswork with me, are you? Oh, all right: I'm willing you should know, for I want you to fail this girl in her hour of need, as that will prove what you are. I'll fasten the crime on you later. I'll own up to you now that I haven't a particle of proof that you snuffed out my friend. I merely doped it out by putting two and two together after I was lucky enough to detect you sneaking back into this house last night. But perhaps I should say I did it by putting one and two together, meaning you for the one and that girl and poor Tom for the two.”

“Go on,” urged Singleton calmly.

“All right. You knew when she left this house last night, and you got up and followed her. She went to see Bronson in that room over McCurdy's old place. You found them there. You're pretty far gone on that skirt, so you sent Tom west on her account. Then, in order to delay discovery of the crime as long as possible by leaving the heavy door locked and double bolted on the inside, you took the girl out of the place by way of the skylight and the roofs.”

He spoke like a man assured that he had hit upon the truth. There was no uncertainty, no faltering. The words ran swiftly from his tongue as he stood over the bed with one guilt-charging finger upraised, shaking it now and then.

The fellow hadn't touched the real motive which had led James Singleton, fever fretted and roused by thoughts of Bronson's brutal treatment of Estelle, rise from his bed and go to the hide-out above McCurdy's old saloon. Nevertheless, it was true that Singleton had gone there with the intention of killing Bronson, and he had left the wretch dead in that room. He was quite positive about this, in spite of a confusing tumult in his brain.

He also remembered that he had once imagined he hadn't fired the deadly shot, but of course he had been mistaken about that, for there had been no one else in the room to fire it. When he recalled the fact that he hadn't heard the report of a weapon, yet had seen the man, scarcely more than an arm's-length away, death smitten by a bullet, he told himself that his excitement, added to an abnormal mental and physical condition, must explain why his senses had momentarily failed to register his own involuntary action when he fired and had likewise rendered him deaf to the report of the weapon. His discovery later that one shot had been fired from the pistol he had been carrying had thrust uncertainty aside and left him convinced of his own guilt.

And now unless he came across with a full confession they would charge an innocent girl with the crime.

He began to laugh queerly, and continued to laugh when he saw Mygart staring at him in perplexity. “Why, you poor cheap scum!” he said. “How did you ever get the idea you could come here and bluff me? You were going to have the glory of driving me into making a confession, were you? And that was the way you'd get revenge on me. Well, you've got another guess coming.”

Then he hurled weakness aside, sat up in bed, and swung his feet to the floor. “Get out of here!” he shouted. “Get out, or by the Lord Harry there'll be another job for the undertaker!”

Astounded by this unexpected burst of strength and wrath, Mygart recoiled, his yellow soul betrayed by the alarm that vaulted into his eyes.

At this moment the door of the room flew open and Mrs. McMorrow stood on the threshold. “What's the meaning of all this noise in a sick room?” she exclaimed.

“Why, he—he's suddenly gone off his nut,” said Mygart, backing away from the bed.

“Get out,” Singleton almost roared, “or I'll throw you out!”

The landlady left the doorway clear by stepping into the room. “It's a fine friend of Mr. Singleton ye must be,” she said sarcastically to the visitor. “You've done well, getting him all fevered up again! Now ye'd better take his hint about hurrying away from here or I'll be after throwing ye out meself.”

Mygart turned in the doorway, his face doubly repulsive with rage and hate. “Oh, all right, Mr. Singleton!” he said contemptuously. “Now you're showing what sort of a brave fellow you are. You'll let a woman pay the penalty for your crime, will you? Well, let me tell you that she'll have to pay unless you save her. There's no way in the world for her to escape without your help.”

“Be gone with ye!” cried Mrs. McMorrow, shutting the door in his face,

“Thanks,” said Singleton, falling back into bed.

The agitated landlady hastened to make him as comfortable as she could, chattering apologies for being deceived by Mygart's claim that he was a friend who had come to see the sick man, with the permission of Doctor Carver.

“And now he's got ye all stirred up and fevery again,” she said sympathizingly. “It's a poor nurse I make, but I can give ye your medicine that'll make ye slape, and——”

But, fearing morphine that would make him sleep too long, Singleton positively refused to take another drop of medicine, much to the good woman's dismay. For some moments it appeared that she would attempt to administer a dose by main force, but finally she ceased to insist.

“What time is it?” he asked, and would not be satisfied until she had answered him correctly. Then: “Eleven forty-five,” he muttered. 'Two hours and a quarter. I can rest a while.”

“Whether ye take your medicine or not,” said Mrs. McMorrow, sitting near, “I'll not leave this room again until you are slaping sound in that bed.”

So, in order to deceive her into leaving him to attempt the thing he meant to do, he pretended to fall asleep after a time. With his eyes closed, he lay there, breathing slowly and deeply, and listening all the while to hear her go out of the room. Thus he finally tricked himself into genuine slumber. He slept more soundly and quietly than he had for days, and while he slept the momentous hours trickled silently into the abyss of the past.

CHAPTER VIII.

Before the Coroner.

After listening to testimony—given by Mygart and the murdered man's brother—regarding the finding of Tom Bronson's dead body in what had once been the cardroom over McCurdy's saloon, the coroner called the doctor who had performed an autopsy on the body. The latter identified the bullet that had been taken from the dead man's brain, and then a local dealer in firearms stated that the lead had come from a .45-caliber cartridge.

Jake Shillaber, the night watchman, took the stand and told of seeing an unknown woman in a long black cloak and hood, who was hurrying along Edgeway Street nearly an hour after midnight. But, even though she was in such a haste that she was almost running, he hadn't regarded her appearance as remarkable because of the fact that a masquerade ball was being held in Fowler Hall, and he had concluded that she had come from that direction.

“You see, sir, I sort of sized her up as some female who'd been gone to the shindy without an escort and had stayed out later'n she ought, for which reason she was hikin' home as fast as she could beat it,” he stated.

“Did you get a look at her face?” questioned the coroner.

“Well, no, I didn't. She was on the west side of the street, and I was on t'other side. I didn't cross over. And she was wearin' the hood of her cloak pulled down over her face. I sorter thought I caught a glimpse of a white dress under the cloak when it flapped open once, but I wouldn't be sure about that.”

“Did you encounter any other suspicious characters about that time, Shillaber?”

“Yep, I guess I did. I met the devil a few minutes later, and he was makin' tracks in the same direction the female in the black cloak had gone.”

“What do you mean by saying you met the devil?”

“Why, I mean, sir, that I ran up against a human critter all in a tight flamin' red outfit that sure made him look like the Old Boy himself from horns to tail.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, sir, I came near climbin' the nearest telephone pole, but, instead of doin' that, I stopped him and asked him where he came from.”

“Go on.”

“Well, instead of answerin' my question, he wanted to know had I seen a gal in a black cloak, and I told him I had and also which way she was headin' in such a hurry. But when he started to scoot after her without any further sociability I grabbed him by the tail and held on solid while he pawed the pavin' and frothed at the mouth like he'd just lunched off a cake of shavin' soap. He was awful anxious to be on his way, but I insisted on an explanation, and he owned up that him and the gal had had a row at the mask ball and she'd run away from him, a-vowin' to do somethin' rash. As I didn't recognize him, I asked his name and where hung out, and he said he said he was Fred Roth, who boarded at 203 Cross Street. That's Mrs. Kinstry's boarding house for mill hands. He talked so fair and honest that I let him go, sir, but I've been to see Mrs. Kinstry to-day, and she says there ain't no Roth stayin' at her place and ain't never been one in her recollection.”

“And you haven't been able to find this man?”

“No, sir, not hide nor hair of him,”

“Anything more, Shillaber?”

“Why, no, sir, except that a short time before I see this gal I was comin' along Water Street near Ram Alley and got a queer notion I see somebody duck into the alley. But I shot my light down the alley when I passed along, and there wasn't nothing visible except ash cans and dump piles, so I decided I was probably mistaken.”

“After your first encounter with them did you again see the woman in the cloak or the man dressed like the devil?”

“No, sir. My beat took me away from that quarter, and I never see no more of them.”

Dave Mygart was recalled to the stand. Although the weather was far from cool and the room almost uncomfortably warm, he was wearing a long, loose rain-proofed topcoat. His manner was that of a man nervous but determined to the point of eagerness.

The preliminaries were almost hurdled. Asked if he had chanced to be on the streets of Spearfield after midnight last night, he promptly replied that he had. “I've been having a fierce time with insomnia lately, sir,” he explained, “and so I've taken to walking in the open air almost all hours of the night. I was out last night until after two o'clock.”

“Where were you between twelve and one?”

“Some time between twelve and one—nearly one, I should judge—I came up Dock Street after going down to the water front, where a barge lay at Chumper's wharf, discharging a cargo of coal. I had been watching the night shift at work and noticing a yacht out in the harbor that was using its searchlight at that hour for some reason or another. Just as I was about to leave, the searchlight was flung into my eyes, and it dazzled me so that I had trouble getting up to Water Street. It was a black night, sir, as dark as the inside of a pocket, and Dock Street is poor lighted, with only one lamp on it from Water to the wharves. Well, when I turned into Water Street I ran smack into a woman who was dressed in a black cloak and had the hood of the cloak pulled over her face. She was panting and excited, and she gave a little cry when I grabbed her. It was rather queer, meeting her that way, so I didn't let go of her right off when she tried to pull away. Instead of that, I snatched her hood back and took a look at her face. Then she struck me and managed to break loose. She went running down Dock Street like a deer and vanished quicker than a wink. She was gone, sir, when I looked after her, and I couldn't tell where she'd disappeared to.”

“Were you in the vicinity of a street light when you snatched off her hood, Mygart?”

“Not more than thirty feet from one.”

“Did the light fall on the woman's face?”

“As fair as anything could, sir.”

“And did you recognize her?”

“I'll say I did.”

“Was she a person you knew?”

“She was somebody I'd met, though I can't say I'd been regularly introduced to her.”

“Is she in this room?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then please point her out to the jury.”

Leaning forward, Mygart flung out a long arm and leveled his finger at Enid Chester, the nurse, who was sitting with those who had been summoned as witnesses. “There she is,” he announced.

Instantly Miss Chester sprang to her feet. Her hands were clenched and her face colorless, but her eyes seemed to blaze. “It isn't true!” she cried. “The man is lying, sir! I never met him anywhere last night——”

The coroner rapped sharply, commanding her to be silent. “You'll have a chance to testify soon, miss,” he told her. “You will be given an opportunity to refute any statements made about you. Sit down and be quiet.”

Reluctantly she relapsed upon the seat; her indignant glance still rested upon Mygart, who gave her a single momentary look that seemed to be charged with masked malice.

As Mygart appeared to have nothing more to tell that would have any bearing upon the case, he was soon dismissed from the stand.

Captain Oscar Peters, of the yacht Sagamore, followed Mygart. He stated that a new searchlight had recently been placed upon the yacht, and, last night being exceedingly dark, he had taken a whim to test the light on returning aboard after attending the masquerade ball as a spectator, The light was turned on around twelve-forty-five and kept in use for about thirty-five minutes.

“While this light was being tested, Captain Peters,” questioned the coroner, “did it show you anything of a surprising or unexpected nature?”

“Yes, sir. It showed us some people moving on the roof of a building here in town, which was rather surprising and unexpected, considering the time of night.”

“How many persons did you see, captain?”

“I wasn't sure. At one time I thought there were three, but there may not have been more than two.”

“Could you tell if they were male or female?”

“Well, I thought they were a man and a woman.”

“What were they doing?”

“They seemed to be engaged in a struggle of some sort. The woman was dressed in white, and the man's clothing appeared to be bright red, although I wasn't sure of that. I was directing the light myself, and I glimpsed them just as I swung it in another direction. By the time I had picked the building out again—or at least the one on which I thought I had seen them—all I could see was something that resembled a crouching figure or a four-legged animal, which quickly disappeared. I saw nothing more of them.”

“Did you note the location of the building on which you saw these figures?”

“As accurately as I could, sir. The Sagamore lay off the foot of Pine Street and the building was beyond a dock at which a night crew was taking coal out of a barge, so I judged the building was in the vicinity of Water and Dock Streets. Looking for it to-day, I decided it could have been any one of three old flat-roofed wooden structures that are crowded together there. One of these buildings is at the corner ot Water and Dock, the next fronts on Water, and the third is jammed down into a crooked alley.”

“Wave you ascertained if this last is the building in which Thomas Bronson's dead body was found to-day?”

“Yes, sir, it's the same one.”

Captain Peters was excused and Enid Chester was summoned. As the nurse rose to her feet a rustle ran over the room, followed by a breathless hush. Even though she was pale as milk, her striking beauty, which was of the distinctly appealing sort, awakened general admiration. It was evident that she was struggling to suppress extreme agitation, and she trembled a little in spite of her efforts to be calm. For an instant her white teeth caught at her lower lip, and her shapely hand, lifted to receive the oath, quivered slightly.

Miss Chester stated that she had recently come to Spearfield from New York City. Her home, she said, was in Leedstown, New York, where her mother still lived, her father being dead. She admitted that she had been to California and that she had met Tom Bronson in Los Angeles, but she denied that she had ever seen him more than once before coming to Spearfield, and on that occasion she hadn't been in his company for more than fifteen minutes. This statement she persisted in despite rigid questioning calculated to trip her up if she were not telling the truth.

She acknowledged that since coming to Spearfield she had sought Bronson out on one occasion and spent nearly thirty minutes with him in conversation of a private nature. What they had talked about she declined to say.

“Miss Chester,” questioned the grim coroner, “were you not known in California by the name of Alice Clayton?”

She caught her breath, her entire body tensing. “No, sir,” she answered, “I was not.”

“Wasn't that the name by which you were known when you met Tom Bronson?”

“I tell you, sir, I was never known by that name!”

“Under what name were you known when you were led into a sham marriage by Bronson?”

Now she was breathless for a moment. Then: “I never was led into anything of the sort!” she exclaimed.

“Then you deny that Bronson deceived you in that manner, for which deception you threatened him with violence, even with death?”

“Yes, sir, I deny that.”

“And you didn't come here to Spearfield for the purpose of compelling him to give you money?”

“I came here to—to get away from New York City.”

“Why did you choose this place?”

“Well, I had to go somewhere.”

“And you insist that you have never received money from Thomas Bronson?”

“Never—not as much as one cent.”

“And you've never made any threats against him?”

“Oh, no, no!”

The coroner leaned still farther over his desk, boring her with his piercing eyes. “Now look here! What were you doing alone on the streets of this town between midnight and two o'clock this morning? Come, answer me.”

But she was silent, her eyes lowered, her pallid face having grown set almost to the point of sullenness. She refused to answer. Nor would she deny that she had been alone upon the streets of the town at the time stated.

The coroner grew angry. He leaned over his desk and shook an accusing finger at her, bombarding her with questions to which she replied merely by shaking her head. Her shoulders drooped and she seemed to wilt.

“If you were not the woman in the black cloak,” demanded the relentless inquisitor, “if you were not the mysterious woman seen by the night watchman and Mygart last night, what were you doing with this cloak in your possession to-day when you were brought into the sheriff's office?”

As he rapped out this question the coroner suddenly produced a long black cloak and flung it outspread so that it hung over his desk before her eyes. “Do you deny that you were carrying this very cloak, completely and heavily wrapped in brown paper?” he persisted.

“No, sir,” she answered faintly, like the murmuring of a distant wind, “I deny nothing—nothing! De what you please with me. Send me to prison—to the electric chair! Only don't—dont ask me any more questions! My strength—is—gone!”

CHAPTER IX.

Tense Moments.

A tenseness like a strong net had been flung over the witnesses of this scene. They were held fast in the grip of suspense, motionless, staring, hushed. Through that hush came the choked sobbing of the swaying witness, who, with quivering hands pressed over her closed eyes, seemed on the point of collapsing.

From amid those who were seated at the back of the room a figure darted. Down an aisle sped a girl in whose eyes there was a strange and almost indescribable look. Her ashen lips were parted and she panted as she ran, but made no sound until she had reached the half-fainting nurse, about whom she flung her arms. Then she cried: “Oh, Enid, Enid, dear, I can't stand it! I won't let you try to shield me like this! I shall tell the truth! I don't care what happens, I must tell the truth!”

Turning quickly, she faced the coroner, her form straight and defiant. “Look at me!” she called, her voice vibrating through that silent room. “I am the one who was wearing that cloak last night! I am the one who was known as Alice Clayton in Los Angeles. It was a name I assumed when I went there to try to get into the movies. My right name is Doris Chester, and this is my sister Enid. I am the one who was tricked into a sham marriage by Tom——”

At last the astounded coroner came to life and banged his desk, commanding silence, ordering her to be still until he called to testify and regularly placed under oath.

“Let me take the oath now,” she begged. “I know who killed Tom Bronson.”

The door at the back of the room had swung open a moment or two before this and admitted James Singleton fully and carefully dressed. Sweeping aside thee guard who tried to stop him, he came down the aisle with a swinging stride. There was a faint, smiling look of pride on his face, which was highly flushed, and his army .45 was in his hand. His manner and appearance caused every eye to regard him with wonderment that was close to awe.

“Mr. Coroner and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, bowing his bared head as he spoke, “why waste valuable time? I shot the scoundrel and here is the weapon I did it with.” He carefully laid the loaded pistol upon the coroner's desk.

Turning, his eyes met the staring orbs of Dave Mygart, and his smile became more pronounced.

From somewhere outside the door that Singleton had left standing open and the amazed guard had neglected to close came the cry of a distant newsboy, faint but distinct: “Extry! Spearfield Herald extry! All about the murder! All about the murdered man's crazy wife escapin' from the 'sylum 'nd bein' found drownded in Spearfield harbor. Buy the extry!”

“Close that door!” commanded the coroner.

Regaining control of the situation, he dismissed Enid Chester and listened to James Singleton's appeal to be placed under oath. But Doctor Charles Carver came forward at once and informed the coroner that Singleton was unquestionably laboring under delusion caused by the fever that should be holding him in bed at this moment, and that testimony from him at the present time, under oath or otherwise, would be utterly valueless.

“Why, he should be in bed this minute and too weak to lift his head from the pillow,” said the doctor. “It's false strength, roused by delirium, that made it possible for him to appear here like this.”

He then attempted to get Singleton out of the room by mild persuasion, but the sick man flatly refused to go. “You'll have to take me by main force, doctor,” he declared stubbornly. “I came here to testify, and I'm as sane as you are, fever or no fever. I rested in order to get strength to come, and I nearly overslept; but, now that I'm here, I propose to stay until my story is admitted as evidence. Eventually they'll have to listen to it.”

Meanwhile the nurse and the girl who had claimed to be her sister had been joined by a slim, anxious-eyed young man who appeared to be a stranger in Spearfield. Apparently unaware of the wondering eyes turned upon them, the trio whispered among themselves, speaking so guardedly, although all three were excited, that persons quite near them could catch no more than an occasional word of what they were saying. At first it seemed that Enid Chester was remonstrating in a manner that threatened to become hysterical, but presently, after being compelled to listen to the others, a sudden remarkable change, expressive of untold relief, came over her.

By this time the coroner had again secured the helm which had been temporarily wrested from his grasp by the irregular and unexpected current of events. The room grew quiet again, but it was the quietness of new tenseness and expectation. Everybody seemed to feel that something still more surprising was about to occur, and all were on the qui vive with eagerness for the further unfolding of the drama.

CHAPTER X.

“This Is the Man.”

The oath was administered to the girl who had said she was Doris Chester. In build and looks she somewhat resembled Enid Chester, but the most striking similarity lay in her voice, which sounded so much like the voice of the nurse that a blindfolded person, no matter how well he knew them, would have found it a difficult matter to tell which one was speaking. It caused James Singleton, sitting at attention with Doctor Carver beside him, to wrinkle his brows in perplexity and shake his head, his eyes turning in doubt from the witness to the other girl, a short distance away.

After the usual leading questions, the coroner said; “You may tell your story in your own way, Miss Dorothy Chester, keeping as closely as possible to facts which may aid the jury in arriving at a definite opinion regarding the manner in which Thomas Bronson met his death.”

She thanked him in a low voice. Her cheeks were quite hollow and there was a heavy weariness in her eyes. She was plainly nervous and jumpy. In spite of a seeming air of sullen recklessness in which she was wrapped—a touch of resentful defiance of the world—she was not unattractive.

“Well, I—I first met Mr. Bronson in Los Angeles 'most three years ago,” she began falteringly. “I'd gone to California with the idea of getting into the movies. My father had died and left just a little money for my mother, so it was up to me to get busy and do something, like Enid was doing. She'd been through a training school for nurses, but I wanted to jump right int something I could make money at without wasting any time. I had a couple of hundred that an aunt had left me when she died, and that got me out to Los Angeles all right. I did get into the pictures, but I found about two million other girls out there who were all trying to be stars, and I never got any further than atmosphere work at from three to five dollars a day—when I worked. Let me say that that was sometimes no more than a day or two a week, and it wasn't long before I was wondering where my next meal ticket was coming from.

“That's the way I was up against it when I met Tom Bronson, but I was making a front. We became friendly right away.

“Well, I'd met a man before that who wanted me to marry him, but he was pretty near as poor as I was. He'd been disowned by his people, so he'd collected another name, too. He called himself Fred Roth.

“Now Fred he became angry about me having anything to do with Tom Bronson. He said Tom was a bad one, but he didn't suspect just how bad Tom was all the same. Tom led me up before a parson—or somebody I supposed was a parson at that time. It wasn't until two months later that I found out he was already married.

“Tom had taught me to smoke opium with him. Although horrified at first, the habit gradually grew upon me. Of course I tried to force him to get a divorce and remarry me, but he just laughed until I lost my head and tried to knife him, but I failed. It would have been a good thing if I'd succeeded.

“After that he was afraid, and tried to keep away from me, but I made him buy me off. And, after the way he treated me, I'd squeeze him dry. Even when my sister Enid, whom I'd written to, came out there and begged him to get a divorce he just laughed at her. Right after that he came back East.

“Well, I wouldn't go back home when Enid tried to get me to. I stayed and just managed to get along somehow. Perhaps if Tom hadn't taught me to smoke I might have come through all right, but a habit like that doesn't do anybody any good. They won't ever see my name in electrics now.

“After I married Bronson, Fred Roth disappeared. I hadn't any idea where he'd gone, and he never knew until six weeks ago that my marriage was a fake. You see, I'd given up trying to get anywhere in pictures, and I drifted back East. I ran into Fred in New York. Fred was violently angry when he saw how I'd changed and heard my story. He was so mad that he said he was going to hunt Bronson up and kill him. That started me—that and telling about my troubles to Fred—and I said he needn't bother, for I was going to find Bronson myself before long and let him have the knife I tried to pass him once. I'll own up that perhaps I was bluffing about that at first, but I kept thinking of it until it got into my mind that I was really going to do that very thing. And one night I said I was going to start out the next day after Bronson.

“You see, my sister was in New York, working most of the time, and she was really supporting me. She'd heard me make threats about Bronson, too, and when I disappeared, both she and Fred thought they knew where I'd gone. Enid followed me here soon as she could, and Fred did so afterward, though he had to throw up a good position. Anybody that has anything to do with me is bound to play in hard luck.

“It made Tom Bronson mad when I turned up here in Spearfield and began to blackmail him again. He said he'd get some money from his brother. So I took a room in that old Rankin Building on the corner of Dock and Water to wait for Tom Bronson to keep his promise.

“Well, my sister followed me here and begged me to go away with her, but I refused. I told her Bronson would have to give me money. So, having her credentials with her, she stayed and got a nursing job.

“Fred came later, and I told him Bronson had promised to marry me in case his wife died in the asylum, which the doctors were saying she would before long. He said he'd see that Bronson kept his word.

“Tom pretended he was sorry he hadn't done the right thing by me in the first place. There was to be a mask ball in Fowler Hall last night, and he put it up to me that we should go. Well, as I didn't have any costume Tom got a fairy rig for me. He said for me to look for him there dressed as the devil.

“Now I was foolish enough to tell this to Fred, and last night he came to the ball himself, all rigged out as the devil. I guess it was his notion to start something with Bronson. Well, of course I took him for Tom, and when I found out my mistake we quarreled. I told him I knew where Tom was and that I was going after him. He tried to keep me from doing that, but I gave him the slip, got my cloak, and started. That was the cloak my sister came and got from me to-day, after she'd heard they were looking for a mysterious woman who'd worn such a rig last night.

“Enid took that cloak away so they couldn't find it in my room if they came there to search for it, but she was caught with it. You see, I hadn't told her all I knew about the murder, and maybe she didn't believe me when I said that I didn't shoot Bronson. There are some things I was afraid to tell even to my own sister that I am about to confess now.

“After Mygart heard about the night watchman seeing me last night on Edgeway Street, he claimed he had met the woman in the cloak, snatched off her hood, and recognized my sister. Maybe he told that to get even with Enid for turning him down cold and hard one day. Or perhaps he had another reason.

“Enid had begged me not to go to the masquerade, and I'd just about promised her I wouldn't. She was worried about me, so she came out last night to find out if I'd broken my promise. Mygart saw her somewhere on the streets, I guess, so he made up that lie about her and swore to it. Oh, but it won't do him a bit of good, now that I'm going to tell everything!

“When I left Fowler Hall last night I was sure I knew where to find Tom Bronson. He'd told me all about his secret room next to the top deck of that old building in Ram Alley and tried to get me there to smoke opium with him. He claimed I could do it and nobody ever know a thing about it. All I'd have to do was to go up on the roof of the old Rankin Building, where I was rooming and cross the roof of the next building on Water Street to the roof of the one in the alley, and then he would let me in through the skylight. I told Fred about that when we had our fuss at the hall.

“Well, I went. I guess I must have been crazy, but I went. It was awful dark up there on the roof of the Rankin Building, but I found a place where I could climb to the next roof, which was higher, and then I got down on the roof that had the skylight, through which a light was shining. I got to that skylight and looked down into the room, but I could see only a part of it and no sign of Tom. I was just going to make a noise—to rap on the skylight or call—when I saw a door to the room swing open. A man came in swiftly, thrusting the door behind his back. He had a pistol in his hand, and the way he looked made me watch with my tongue frozen stiff in my mouth.”

“Did you know the man, Miss Chester?” interjected the coroner.

“No, sir.”

“Did you see him distinctly?”

“Well, the old glass in the sklight was pretty dirty, but I could see him fairly plain at that.”

“Would you know him if you saw him again?”

“Yes,”

“Then you mean to say you would know him?”

“Why, not a question. And I've seen him again, sir. He's here in this room.”

This caused a general stirring to run through the place. It seemed that nearly every one of the tense listeners looked around as though he thought he might be able to pick out the man.

“He's here?” said the coroner. “Then you may point him out.”

Her gaze became fixed upon James Singleton, who sat with his arms folded and a faint, grim smile on his face as she pointed at him. “That is the man!” she declared.

Singleton bowed. “Yes,” he agreed, “I am the man.”

CHAPTER XI.

Following a Muffled Click.

Trapped in the voluminous folds of his loose topcoat, Dave Mygart sat a short distance away, his venomous eyes glittering like those of a serpent. He had been surprised, beyond doubt, by the latter part of Doris Chester's testimony, just as every other person in the room save Singleton appeared surprised; and he caught his breath, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a grin of triumph, when the girl pointed out the man he hated with implacable lust.

Not far from him, Enid Chester trembled as though shaken by a titanic hand of ice. Her eyes were staring, her lips parted, her hands gripped tightly together. Now she knew that what Singleton had told her about leaving his bed and going to that room of dark tragedy had not sprung from the delirious imaginings of a fever-scorched brain. His knowledge of the time, place, and manner of Bronson's death had not come through anything even remotely resembling second sight. And she was benumbed by dread of what it seemed her sister was about to reveal; so benumbed that, though she desired to do so, she couldn't cry out to Doris and bid her be silent.

James Singleton appeared to be the calmest person in the room. His eyes met Mygart's shining orbs without as much as a flicker, but when they turned to Enid Chester and he saw how distressed she was he showed tokens of restrained emotion. Also he was thrilled as she looked at him with sincere sympathy and sorrow.

The coroner urged the witness to continue: “Go on, Miss Chester. What happened next?”

“Why, sir, I heard him telling somebody that I knew must be Bronson to wake up. Bronson was in that part of the room that I couldn't see, but I could look down on the head and shoulders and back of this man here as he seemed to be shaking Tom. Well, it appeared like he had some trouble in waking Tom up, and when he had done so he told him right to his face that he'd come there for the particular purpose of killing him.”

“You heard this threat, did you? You could hear what he said through that skylight? Do you mean that?”

“Yes. One pane of glass had a piece broken out of a corner, and I was leaning over it.”

“Very well. Go on.”

“Well, Bronson finally go up after a while. He didn't seem to be at all afraid of the man who was threatening him, but I guess that was because he was full of dope so that he didn't see things clearly at first. Then they began quarreling.

“I'd been trying to see what was going on, though I was sort of paralyzed; for I never made a sound nor did a thing but kneel there and watch and listen. Well, just when Bronson yelled that threat to break the other man's head I happened to see that the door to the room was opening again, swift and without a sound. There was another man there, sir. I guess he must have been following the first one to come in. And he pushed the door open with one hand and lifted the other to point a pistol that seemed to have some sort of a queer-looking arrangement attached to the muzzle of it. Believe me, I tried to yell then, but I just couldn't make a sound.

“Tom Bronson had jumped up with something like a stool in his hands. I could see him when he was on his feet, for that brought him out into the room, you know. Well, he swung that stool to hit the man who'd awakened him, so that that man had to dodge to one side if he didn't want to get busted. Then I saw Tom Bronson drop that stool and sort of all slump together before he went down with a thump on the floor right at the feet of the man he'd tried to hit. And that man stood as still as a stone, looking down at him.

“But,” cut in the coroner, leaning forward over his desk, “the shot—which man fired it?”

“I don't know!” returned the witness. “I didn't hear any shot, anyhow, but maybe that was because I was sort of numbed. The man who'd opened the door backed out of the room right away, closing the door again without making any noise at all, and if either of the others had seen him it was Bronson, and he couldn't tell about it after that. Fred made me promise I wouldn't say a word about it. You can ask him. He said it was good riddance to a scoundrel, anyhow, and that we didn't want to get ourselves mixed up in the mess. Oh, I was scared all right! If I hadn't been——”

“Miss Chester,” interrupted the coroner, “did you know the man who opened the door after James Singleton entered the room—the man who had a pistol with a queer-looking arrangement attached to the end of it?”

“Yes.”

“Who was he?”

“Why, he——”

As she was speaking she had started to turn from the coroner when, to the amazement of the breathless, staring persons in the room, she pitched forward and fell heavily upon the floor. There she lay in a crumpled heap, as still as she could be.

“She's fainted!” exclaimed Doctor Carver, breaking the silence that had chained everybody momentarily.

He was quickly bending over her, but as he stooped to touch her he seemed to freeze in a rigid posture, staring incredulously at a crimson trickle running down across her temple. He bent nearer. “Great heavens!” he cried hoarsely. “She has been shot!”

In spite of the fever with which he had been doing battle, Singleton was the first person in the room fully to grasp what had happened. From a point not far away he had heard what sounded like a muffled click, which had seemed to occur almost at the same instant that the girl fell to the floor. And so, as Enid Chester cried out in horror and sprang toward her sister, he flung himself bodily upon Dave Mygart, smashing the fellow down and pinning him fast. From the man's hand, hidden beneath the folds of his topcoat, Singleton wrenched a .45-caliber pistol. With the butt of the weapon he smote Mygart a stunning blow upon the head.

“Put the irons on him, Hensen,” he urged as Sheriff Hensen came rushing up. “If you don't you may have trouble with him when he comes to.”

Then he turned, stepped toward the coroner, and placed Mygart's pistol beside his own upon the desk. “It seems that I was mistaken about that revolver of mine, sir,” he said. “This little tool with the silencer attachment must have been the one that bumped Tom Bronson off. But I guess Mygart really fired at me and hit his friend by accident when I dodged aside to avoid the stool Bronson was trying to crack my head with. He was in a pretty bad funk just now when he shot that poor girl from beneath his coat just as she was on the point of naming him.”

CHAPTER XII.

Held Fast.

Once more Singleton awoke and found himself in his own bed. Almost immediately he knew the fever had been conquered. Departing, it had left him weaker than cambric tea, but his head was as clear as a bell. Yet, though he seemed to remember a number of things which had happened since the inquest, concerning the lapse of time he had no notion whatever.

It was evening, and beside a stand on which there was a light, so shaded that it did not shine upon the bed, sat Enid Chester. She was reading a letter, and her lovely profile fascinated the man who lay staring at her.

Presently she dropped the letter into her lap, her fingers still holding it, and there was happiness in the soft sigh that passed her lips and in the faint smile that rose into her face. “I'm glad, glad!” she whispered to herself.

“Then it must be pleasant news,” said Singleton.

She started up. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You're awake! You have been sleeping a long time and very soundly.” Coming quickly to the bed, she placed her soft fingers on his forehead, bending to look at him closely. “You're much better,” she said.

“I'm almost as good as well this minute, Miss Chester,” he declared. “I want to talk. Won't you sit near me, please?”

But before doing as he requested she took his temperature and smiled again when the tube gave evidence that the fever had really been routed. Each time he saw it, her smile seemed more wonderful to him. Indeed he found delight in her every movement and expression, in every tone of her voice and every glance of her eyes. And she was strong—strong of soul as, with all her grace and gentleness, she was strong of body. She helped him upon a fresh, cool pillow, lifting him deftly with an arm beneath his shoulders, and he wanted to ask her not to take that arm away. Presently, having given him something cool and agreeable to drink, she placed her chair by the bed and sat where he could look straight at her.

“Now,” he said eagerly, “let me ask about your sister. By your appearance I'm sure Mygart's treacherous shot didn't wound her seriously.”

“No. It merely cut a furrow in her scalp and stunned her for a short time, but she recovered amazingly after the wound was dressed. In less than twenty-four hours she seemed to be all right.”

“Twenty-four hours!” he exclaimed. “Then that was yesterday?”

“It has been four days since the inquest. You went down flat after getting the pistol away from Mygart and turning it over to the coroner. And the doctor took pains to give you something to keep you in bed for a while after that.”

“I don't seem to remember much of anything that has happened since that time until I awoke with a clear head a few minutes ago. Four days! Well, by the way I feel I judge the old fever is gone now for good. Anyhow, I was master of it for a while following my nap after Mygart came here and practically convinced me that I had actually killed Bronson. I'll admit the scoundrel has nerve. He almost tricked the man he hated into sending himself to the electric chair. When he claimed you would certainly be held for Bronson's murder if I didn't own up to it, I decided at once that they shouldn't hold you.”

Her cheeks flushed, and what he saw in her eyes put uncertainty to flight. “So,” she said in a voice that was a little husky for the moment, “it was for my sake that you resolved to confess that you had killed Bronson!”

“Now don't give me too much credit,” he warned. “Don't forget that Mygart had actually made me believe I did the deed. He couldn't have succeeded in that if I hadn't found one shot had been fired from my pistol, when I examined it the morning following Bronson's death. I had no recollection of firing that——”

He checked himself abruptly, an odd look flashing over his face. Almost at once he began to chuckle softly.

“What are you laughing at?” she asked.

“Listen,” he urged. “What do you hear?”

“Why, I—I hear cats in the back yard. They're fighting. It's dreadful the way they keep it up almost every night.”

“There's the answer—cats! They spoiled my sleep until I was ready to slaughter every one in the world. I must have been half asleep the night that I got up, found my pistol, and fired a shot out of the window to drive them away. Anyhow, I was so dead with sleep that I haven't thought about it since, though I guess the fever kept me from remembering it when I found one cartridge had been fired from my pistol. So I thought that must have been the one I fired at Bronson. Those cats helped Mygart fool me. Only for them the magazine of my pistol would have been full and I would have known I didn't kill Bronson.”

Again that smile lent its radiance to Miss Chester's face.

“I didn't want to disturb you when I awoke and found you smiling over your letter,” he told her. “There is nothing in this wide world like your smile.”

“The letter was from my sister,” she said hurriedly to cover her confusion. “And you were right in thinking it contained good news. Fred Roth, whose right name is Randall, was born in Madison, only twenty-seven miles from here. He has taken Doris there to see his folks, and they are going to be married right away. They will come back to testify against Dave Mygart when he is brought to trial.”

“I'm glad for your sake and for your sister's. So the coroner held Mygart on a——”

“For shooting Tom Bronson with that pistol with the silencer attachment—yes.”

“Killing his friend was a great blunder on Mygart's part,” said Singleton, “He had been drinking and he meant that bullet for me. I had a feeling that I was being followed long before I let myself into McCurdy's old place. That man was dogging me. He crept up those stairs behind me. Of course Bronson had given him a key. He fired at my back, but it was his friend he killed when I dodged aside to save my head from the stool Bronson swung at it. Then, being a coward to the marrow, he hurried away in panic. And I heard him letting himself out at the lower door when I started to go down those stairs again. I thought it was somebody trying to get in, so I rushed back into the room, locked the door and double bolted it, and escaped through the skylight.”

The nurse nodded. “After her wound was dressed my sister, as well as Mr. Randall, gave testimony that you left the room that way. Randall had finally overtaken Doris on that roof, and he forced her to come away. Thinking you might be severely hurt, she wanted to stop and help you, but he wouldn't let her.”

Singleton laughed again. “And she was the angel I saw struggling to save my soul from the devil. Well, she has your voice, and the touch of her hands is like yours, yet I'm sure I'd never again be deceived by her voice or her hands.”

Then he lay still, looking at her steadily until the color mounted again into her cheeks and she bent over the bed, smoothing out the coverlet to hide her confusion. His fingers secured and clung to both her hands.

“I know you can take them away now if you want to,” he said, “but if you do I shall punish you by holding them four times as long when I'm well again.”

“That frightens me,” she replied, her eyes shining, a wonderful smile on her lips. “It frightens me so much that I won't try to take them away until you get tired and let me go.”

“Enid,” he whispered, “I'll never get tired enough to let you go—never as long as I live.”