THE MAN WHO FELL THROUGH THE EARTH (Part 2)

CHAPTER X

Penny Wise and Zizi

And so it was at this stage of affairs that Pennington Wise got into the game. He willingly agreed to take up the case, for the mystery of it appealed to him strongly, and by a stroke of good luck he was not otherwise engaged.

He had promised to call at Miss Raynor’s, and as she had asked me to be present also, I went up there, reaching the house before Wise did.

“What’s he like?” Olive inquired of me.

“Good-looking sort of chap, without being handsome,” I told her. “You’ll like his personality, I’m sure, whether he helps us out of our troubles or not.”

“I don’t care a fig for his personality,” she returned, “but I do want him to solve our two mysteries. I suppose you’ll think I’m dreadful—but I’d rather Mr. Wise would find Amory Manning for me, than to discover Uncle Amos’ murderer.”

“I don’t blame you at all for that. Of course, we want to find the criminal, but even more, I too, want to find Mr. Manning for you.”

“And, anyway, I suppose the police think now that Mr. Rodman did it.”

“They don’t go so far as to say that, but they’re hunting up evidence, and they’ve got hold of some pretty damaging information. It seems Rodman was mixed up in some wrongdoing, and it begins to look as if Mr. Gately was in some way connected with it—at least, to a degree.”

“If he was, then he didn’t know it was wrong.” Olive spoke with deep conviction, and I didn’t try to disabuse her mind.

And then Pennington Wise was announced.

As he entered the room his manner showed no trace of self-consciousness, and as I had anticipated, Olive was greatly pleased with her first glimpse of him. But to her surprise, and mine also, he was accompanied, or rather followed, by a young woman, a mere slip of a girl, who paused and stood quietly by.

As Olive smiled at her inquiringly, Wise said:

“That’s Zizi. She’s part of my working paraphernalia, and will just sit and listen while we talk.”

The girl was fascinating to look at. Slight of build, she had a lithe suppleness that made her every motion a gesture of grace, and her pretty smile was appreciative and responsive. She had black hair and very black eyes, which sparkled and danced as she took in her surroundings. But she said no word, acknowledging her brief introduction only by a slight bow, and accepting the chair that Olive offered, she sat quietly, her small gloved hands resting in her lap.

She wore a black suit with a fine set of black fox furs. Unfastening the fur collar, she disclosed a black blouse of soft, thin material which fell away from her slender white throat in becoming fashion.

Her manner was correct in every particular, and she sat in an unembarrassed silence as Wise proceeded to talk.

“I know all that has been in the papers,” he said, somewhat abruptly, “now, I’d like you to tell me the rest. I can’t help feeling there must be more in the way of evidence or clues than has been made public. First of all, do you think Mr. Rodman the guilty man?”

He addressed himself mainly to Olive, though including me in his inquiring glance.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Olive returned; “I won’t believe, however, that Amos Gately was involved in any sort of wrong. His honor and integrity were of the highest type—I knew him intimately enough to certify to that.”

“What sort of wrongdoing is this Rodman accused of?” asked Wise.

“Nobody seems willing to tell that,” I answered, as Olive shook her head. “I’ve inquired of the police, and they decline to reveal just what they do suspect him of. But I think it’s something pretty serious, and they’re tracking it down as fast as they can.”

“You see,” Olive put in, “if Mr. Rodman is such a bad man, he may have hoodwinked Mr. Gately and made him believe something was all right when it was all wrong.”

“Of course he might,” said Wise, sympathetically. “Did people come here to the house to see Mr. Gately on business?”

“No; never. Uncle had few visitors, but they were always just his friends, not business callers.”

“Then most of our search must be in his offices. You noticed nothing there, Mr. Brice, that seemed indicative?”

Then I told him about the hatpin and the carriage check; and I also related how Norah had found and kept the “powder-paper” that she picked out of the waste basket.

Zizi’s eyes flashed at this, and she said, “Has she traced it?”

It was the first time the girl had spoken, and I was charmed with her voice. Low and soft, it had also a bell-like quality, and seemed to leave a ringing echo in the air after she ceased speaking.

“Yes; to the shop where it was bought,” I replied. “As Norah guessed, it came from a very high-class perfumer’s on Fifth Avenue. But of course he could not tell us to whom he had sold that particular paper.”

“I’d like to see it,” said Zizi, simply, and again relapsed into silence.

“Norah must be a bright girl,” observed Wise, “and she has made a good start by finding the shop. Perhaps we can carry the trail further. It wasn’t yours, Miss Raynor?”

“No; I use a paler tint. This one, I have seen it, is quite a deep pink.”

“Indicating a brunette possibly. Now, it’s not likely it belonged to that old Mrs. Driggs, so we must assume another woman in the office that day. And we must discover who she is.”

“There is the hatpin, you know,” said Olive. “I have it here, if you care to see it. But the police decided it meant nothing.”

“Nothing means nothing,” said Zizi, with a funny little smile. “Please let us see the hatpin.”

Olive took it from a desk drawer and handed it to the girl, who immediately passed it over to Penny Wise.

He looked at it with interest, for a silent minute.

“There couldn’t be a better portrait parlé!” he exclaimed. “This pin belongs to a lady with dark, straight hair—coarse, and lots of it. She has good teeth, and she is proud of them. Her tastes incline to the flashy, and she is fond of strong perfumes. She is of somewhat untidy habits and given to sentiment. She is intellectual and efficient and, if not wealthy, she has at least a competence.”

“For gracious goodness sake!” gasped Olive; “and I’ve studied that hatpin for hours and never could deduce a thing!”

“What I have read from it may be of no use to us,” said Wise, indifferently; “I think it will be a sufficient indication of which way to look to find the lady in question, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the finding of her will do any good.”

“But she may know something to tell us that will do good,” Olive suggested; “at any rate, let’s find her. How will you go about it?”

“Why, I think it will be a good plan to ask the stenographer, Jenny Boyd, if she ever saw anyone there who fits our description.”

“She’s the lady of the powder-paper, maybe,” murmured Zizi, and Penny Wise said, “Of course,” in a preoccupied way, and went on:

“That Jenny person must be further grilled. She hasn’t told all she knows. She was in Mr. Gately’s employ but a short time and yet she picked up a lot of information. But she hasn’t divulged it all, not by a long shot!”

“How do you know all this?” asked Olive, wonderingly.

“I’ve read the papers. I have an unbreakable habit of reading between the lines, and I think Miss Jenny has been persuaded by somebody to suppress certain interesting bits of evidence that would fit right into our picture puzzle.”

“May I come in?” said a gentle voice, and Mrs. Vail appeared in the doorway.

As we rose to greet her, Olive presented Mr. Wise, and then Mrs. Vail permitted herself the luxury of a stare of genuine curiosity.

His whimsical smile charmed her, and she was most cordial of speech and manner. Indeed, so absorbed was she in this new acquaintance that she didn’t even see Zizi, who sat, as always, back and in the shadow.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” said Mrs. Vail, fluttering into a chair. “Just go on as if I were not here. I’m so interested, just let me listen! I won’t say a word. Oh, Olive dear, did you show Mr. Wise the letter?”

“No; it’s unimportant,” replied the girl.

“But I don’t think it is, my dear,” Mrs. Vail persisted. “You know it might be a—what do they call it?—a clue. Why, I knew a lady once—”

“A letter is always important,” said Zizi from her corner, and Mrs. Vail jumped and gave a startled exclamation.

“Who’s that?” she cried, peering through her lorgnon in the direction of the voice.

“Show yourself, Zizi,” directed Wise. “This is my assistant, Mrs. Vail. She is in our council but not of it. I can’t explain her exactly, but you’ll come to understand her.”

Zizi leaned forward and gave Mrs. Vail a pleasant if indifferent smile, then sank back to her usual obscurity.

The girl was, Wise had said, a negligible personality, and yet whenever she spoke she said something!

Mrs. Vail looked bewildered, but apparently she was prepared to accept anything, however strange, in connection with detective work.

“Well,” she observed, “as that pretty little thing says, a letter is always important, and I think you ought to show it, Olive. I had a letter once that changed the whole current of my life!”

“What is this letter, Miss Raynor?” asked Wise, in a matter-of-fact way.

“One I received in this morning’s mail,” Olive replied; “I paid no attention to it, because it was anonymous. Uncle Amos told me once never to notice an anonymous letter—always to burn and forget it.”

“Good enough advice, in general,” said Wise; “but in such serious matters as we have before us any letter is of interest.”

“Is the letter written by a woman, and signed ‘A Friend’?” asked Zizi in her soft voice.

“Did you write it?” cried Olive, turning to the wraith-like girl who sat so quietly behind her.

“Oh, no, no, no! I didn’t write it,” and the demure little face showed a fleeting smile.

“Then how did you know? For it is signed ‘A Friend,’ but I don’t know whether it was a woman who wrote it or not.”

“It was,” and Zizi nodded her sleek little black head. She had removed her hat and placed it on a nearby chair, and as she nestled into her furs which formed a dark background, her small white face looked more eerie than ever. “Ninety percent of all anonymous letters are written by women, and ninety percent of these are signed ‘A Friend.’ Though usually that is a misstatement.”

“May I see the letter?” asked Wise.

“Sure; I’ll get it.”

It was Zizi who spoke! And rising, she went swiftly across the room, to a desk, and from a pigeonhole took an opened letter, which she carried to Wise, and then dropped back into her seat again.

Mrs. Vail gave a surprised gasp, and Olive looked her amazement.

“How did you know where to find that?” she exclaimed, her great brown eyes wide with wonder.

“Dead easy,” said Zizi, nonchalantly; “you’ve scarcely taken your eyes off that spot, Miss Raynor, since the letter was mentioned!”

“But even though I looked at the desk, how could you pick out the very letter, at once?”

“Oh, I looked at the desk, too. And I saw your morning’s mail, pretty well sorted out. There’s a pile of bills, a pile of what are unmistakably social notes, and, up above in a pigeonhole, all by itself, was this letter. You glanced at it a dozen times or more, so I couldn’t help knowing.”

Olive laughed. One couldn’t help liking the strange girl whose expression was so earnest, even while her black eyes were dancing.

Meanwhile, Penny Wise examined the missive.

“I’ll read it aloud?” and he glanced at Olive, who acquiesced by a nod.

“Miss Raynor:

“Quit looking for slayer of A.G. or you’ll be railroaded in yourself. This is straight goods. Call off all Tecs, or beware consequences. Will not warn twice!

“A Friend.”

“A woman,” Pennington Wise said in a musing voice, after he read it.

“A business woman,” added Zizi from her corner.

“A stenographer maybe,” Wise went on, and Olive cried:

“Do you mean Jenny?”

“Oh, no; this is written by a woman with more brains than Jenny ever dreamed of. A very clever woman in fact.”

“Who?” breathed Olive, her eager face flushing in her interest and anxious to know more.

“I don’t know that, Miss Raynor, but—”

“Oh, Mr. Wise,” broke in Mrs. Vail; “you are so wonderful! Won’t you explain how you do it, as you go along?”

She spoke as if he were a conjurer.

“Anything to oblige,” Wise assented. “Well, here’s how it looks to me. The writer of this letter is a business woman, not only because she uses this large, single sheet of bond paper, but because she knows how to use it. She is a stenographer—by that I do not necessarily mean that is her business—she may have a knowledge of stenography, and be in some much more important line of work. But she is an accomplished typist and a rapid one. This, I know, of course, from the neat and uniform typing. She is clever, because she has used this non-committal paper, which is in no way especial or individual. She is a business woman, again, because she uses such expressions as ‘quit,’ railroaded,’ ‘Tecs,’ ‘straight goods,’—”

“Which she might do by way of being misleading—” murmured Zizi.

“Too many of ’em, and too casually used, Ziz. A society girl trying to pose as a business woman never would have rolled those words in so easily. I should have said a newspaper woman but for a certain peculiarity of style which indicates—what, Zizi?”

“You’ve got it; a telegraph operator.”

“Exactly. Do you know any telegrapher, Miss Raynor?”

“No, indeed!” and Olive looked astounded at the suggestion that she should number such among her acquaintances. “Are you sure?”

“Looks mighty like it. The short sentences and the elimination of personal pronouns seem to me to denote a telegraph girl’s diction. And she is very clever! She has sent the carbon copy of the letter and not the outside typing.”

“Why?” I asked.

“To make it less traceable. You know, typewriting is very nearly as individual as pen-writing. The differentiations of the machine as well as of the user’s technique, are almost invariably so pronounced as to make the writing recognizable. Now these peculiarities, while often clear on the first paper, are blurred more or less on the carbon copy. So ‘A Friend,’ thinking to be very canny, has sent the carbon. This is a new trick, though I’ve seen it done several times of late. But it isn’t so misleading as it is thought to be. For all the individual peculiarities of the typewriter—I mean, the machine, are almost as visible on this as on the other. I’ve noticed them in this case, easily. And moreover, this would-be clever writer has overreached herself! For a carbon copy smudges so easily that it is almost impossible to touch it, even to fold the sheet, without leaving a telltale thumb or finger print! And this correspondent has most obligingly done so!”

“Really!” breathed Zizi, with a note of satisfaction in her low voice.

“And the peculiarities—what are they?” asked Olive.

“The one that jumps out and hits me first is the elevated s. Look—and you have to look closely, Miss Raynor—in every instance the letter s is a tiny speck higher than the other letters.”

“Why, so it is,” and Olive examined the letter with deep interest; “but how can you find a machine with an elevated s?”

“It isn’t a sign-board, it’s a proof. When we think we have the right machine, the s will prove it—not lead us to it.”

“Let me see,” begged Mrs. Vail, reaching for the paper. “A friend of mine is a stenographer; maybe she—”

“Excuse me,” and Penny Wise folded the letter most carefully. “We can’t get any more finger prints on this paper, or we shall render it useless. Now, Miss Raynor, I’m going. I’ll take the letter, and I’ve little doubt it will be a great help to me in my work. I will report to you from time to time, but it may be a few days before I learn anything of importance. Zizi?”

“Yes; I’ll stay here,” and the girl sat quietly in her chair.

“That means she’ll take up her abode with you for the present, Miss Raynor,” and Wise smiled at Olive.

“Live here?”

“Yes, please. It is necessary, or she wouldn’t do it.”

“Oh, let her stay!” cried Mrs. Vail; “she’s so interesting—and queer!”

The object of her comment gave her an engaging smile, but said nothing, and beckoning me to go with him, Wise rose to take leave.

But I wanted to have a little further talk with Olive on several matters and I told Wise I’d join him a little later.

“Be goody-girl, Zizi,” he adjured as he went off, and she nodded her head, but with a saucy grimace at the detective.

“My room?” she said, inquiringly, with a pretty, shy glance at Olive. “I’m no trouble—not a bit. Any little old room, you know.”

“You shall have it in a few moments,” and Olive went away to see the housemaids about it.

Mrs. Vail snatched at a chance to talk uninterruptedly to the strange girl.

“What is your work?” she inquired; “do you help Mr. Wise? Isn’t he wonderful! How you must admire him. I knew a detective once—or, at least, a man who was going to be a detective, but— Oh, do tell me what your part of the work is!”

“I sit by,” returned Zizi, with a dear little grin that took off all edge of curtness.

“Sit by! Is that some technical term? I don’t quite understand.”

“I don’t always understand myself,” and the girl shook her head slowly; “but I just remain silent until Mr. Wise wants me to speak—to tell him something, you know. Then I tell him.”

“But how do you know it?” I put in, fascinated by this strange child, for she looked little more than a child.

“Ooh!” Zizi shuddered, and drew her small self together, her black eyes round and uncanny-looking; “ooh! I donno how I know! I guess the bogie man tells me!”

Mrs. Vail shuddered too, and gave a little shriek.

“You’re a witch,” she cried; “own up, now, aren’t you a witch?”

“Yes, lady, lady! I am a witch—a poor little witch girl!” and Zizi laughed outright at her own little joke.

If her smile had been charming, her laugh was more so. It was not only of a silvery trill, but it was infectious, and Mrs. Vail and I laughed in sympathy.

“What are you all laughing at?” said Olive, reappearing.

“At me,” and Zizi spoke humbly now; “I made ’em laugh. Sorry!”

“Come along with me, you funny child,” and Olive led her away, leaving me to be the victim of Mrs. Vail’s incessant stream of chatter.

The good lady volubly discussed the detective and his assistant and detailed many accounts of people she had known. Her acquaintance was seemingly a wide one!

At last Olive returned, smiling.

“I never saw anything like her!” she exclaimed; “I gave her a pretty little room, not far from mine. I don’t know, I’m sure, why she’s staying here, but I like to have her. Well, in about two minutes she had the furniture all changed about. Not the heavy pieces, of course, but she moved a small table and all the chairs, and finally unscrewed an electric light bulb from one place and put it on another, and then, after looking all about, she said, ‘Just one thing more!’ and if she didn’t spring up on to a table with one jump and take down quite a large picture! ‘There,’ she said, and she set it out in the hall; ‘I can’t bear that thing! Now this is a lovely room, and I thank you, Miss Raynor. The pink one we passed is yours, isn’t it?’

“‘Yes; how did you know?’ I asked her. And she said, ‘I saw a photograph of Mr. Manning on your bureau.’ Little rascal! I can’t help liking her!”

CHAPTER XI

Case Rivers

So absorbed was I in the new interests that had come into my life, so anxious to be of assistance to Olive Raynor, and so curious to watch the procedure of Pennington Wise, that I confess I forgot all about the poor chap I had seen at Bellevue Hospital—the man who “fell through the earth”! And I’m not sure I should ever have thought of him again, save as a fleeting memory, if I hadn’t received a letter from him.

My dear Brice [he wrote]:

I’ve no right to pilfer your time, but if you have a few minutes to squander, I wish you’d give them to me. I’m about to be discharged from the hospital, with a clean bill of health—but with no hint or clue as to my cherished identity. The doctors—drat ’em!—say that some day my memory will spring, full-armed, back at me, but meanwhile, I must just sit tight and wait. Not being of a patient disposition, I’m going to get busy at acquiring a new identity, then, if the old one ever does spring a come-back, I’ll have two—and can lead a double life! No, I’m not flippant, I’m philosophical. Well, if your offer didn’t have a string tied to it come in to see me—please.

Sincerely yours,

Case Rivers.

P.S.—The doctors look upon me as a very important and interesting case—hence my name.

I smiled at the note, and as I had taken a liking to the man from the start, I went at once to see him.

“No,” I assured him, after receiving his cordial welcome, “my offer had no string attached. I’m more than ready to help in any way I can, to find a niche for you in this old town and fit you into it. It doesn’t matter where you hail from, or how you got here; New York is an all-comers’ race, and the devil take the hindmost.”

“He won’t get me, then,” and Rivers nodded his head determinedly; “I may not be in the van, just at first, but give me half a chance, and I’ll make good!”

This was not bumptiousness or braggadocio, I could see, but an earnest determination. The man was sincere and he had a certain doggedness of purpose, which was evident in his looks and manner as well as in his words.

Rivers was up and dressed now, and I saw he was a good-looking chap. His light-brown hair was carefully parted and brushed; his smooth-shaven face was thin and pale, but showed strong lines of character. He had been fitted with glasses—a pince-nez, held by a tiny gold chain over one ear—and this corrected the vacant look in his eyes. His clothes were inexpensive and quite unmistakably ready-made.

He was apologetic. “I’d rather have better duds,” he said, “but as I had to borrow money to clothe myself at all, I didn’t want to splurge. One doctor here is a brick! He’s going to follow up my ‘case,’ and so I accepted his loan. It’s a fearful predicament to be a live, grown-up man, without a cent to your name!”

“Let me be your banker,” I offered, in all sincerity; “I—”

“No; I don’t want coin so much as I want a way to earn some. Now, if you’ll put me in the way of getting work—anything that pays pretty well—I’ll be obliged, sir, and I’ll be on my way.”

His smile was of that frank, chummy sort that makes for sympathy and I agreed to help him in any way I could think of.

“What can you do?” I asked, preliminarily.

“Dunno. Have to investigate myself, and learn what are my latent talents. Doubtless their name is legion. But I’ve nailed one of them. I can draw! Witness these masterpieces!”

He held up some sheets of scribble paper on which I saw several careful and well-done mechanical drawings.

“You were a draughtsman!” I exclaimed, “in that lost life of yours.”

“I don’t know. I may have been. Anyway, these things are all right.”

“What are they?”

“Not much of anything. They’re sort of designs for wall-paper or oilcloth. See? Merely suggestions, you know, but this one, repeated, would make a ripping study for a two-toned paper.”

“You’re right,” I exclaimed, in admiration of the pattern. “You must have been a designer of such things.”

“No matter what I was—the thing is what can I be now, to take my place in the economic world. These are, do you see, adaptations from snow crystals.”

“So they are! It takes me back to my school days.”

“Perhaps I’m harking back to those, too. I remember the pictures of snow crystals in ‘Steele’s Fourteen Weeks in Natural Science.’ Did you study that?”

“I did!” I replied, grinning; “in high school! But, is your memory returning?”

“Not so’s you’d notice it! I have recollection of all I learned in an educational way, but I can’t see any individual picture of me, personally—oh, never mind! How can I get a position as master designer in some great factory?”

“That’s a big order,” I laughed. “But you can begin in a small way and rise to a proud eminence—”

“No, thanky! I’m not as young as I once was—my favorite doctor puts me down at thirty—plus or minus—but I feel about sixty.”

“Really, Rivers, do you feel like an old man?”

“Not physically—that’s the queer part. But I feel as if my life was all behind me—”

“Oh, that’s because of your temporary mental—”

“I know it. And I’m going to conquer it—or get around it some way. Now, if you’ll introduce me—and, yes, act as my guarantee, my reference—I know it’s asking a lot, but if you’ll do that, I’ll make good, I promise you!”

“I believe you will, and I’m only too glad to do it. I’ll take you, whenever you say, around to a firm I know of, that I believe will be jolly glad to get you. You see, so many men of your gifts have gone to war—”

“Yes, I know, and I’d like to enlist myself, but Doc says I can’t, being a—a defective.”

“I wish you were a detective instead,” I said, partly to turn the current of his thoughts from his condition and partly because my mind was so full of my own interests that he was a secondary consideration.

“I’d like to be. I’ve been reading a bunch of detective stories since I’ve been here in hospital, and I don’t see as that deduction business is such a great stunt. Sherlock Holmes is all right, but most of his imitators are stuff and nonsense.”

And then, unable to hold it back any longer, I told him all about the Gately case and about Pennington Wise.

He was deeply interested, and his eyes sparkled when I related Wise’s deductions from the hatpin.

“Has he proved it yet?” he asked; “have you checked him up?”

“No, but there hasn’t been time. He’s only just started his work. He has another task; to find Amory Manning.”

“Who’s he?”

“A man who has disappeared, and there is fear of foul play.”

“Is he suspected of killing Gately?”

“Oh, no, not that; but he was suspected of hiding to shield Miss Raynor—”

“Pshaw! a girl wouldn’t commit a murder like that.”

“I don’t think this girl did, anyway. And, in fact, they—the police I mean—have a new suspect. There’s a man named Rodman, who is being looked up.”

“Oh, it’s all a great game! I wish I could get out into the world and take part in such things!”

“You will, old man. Once you’re fairly started, the world will be—”

“My cellar-door! You bet it will! I’m going to slide right down it.”

“What about your falling through it? Do you remember any more details of that somewhat—er—unusual performance?”

“Yes, I do! And you can laugh all you like. That’s no hallucination, it’s a clear, true memory—the only memory I have.”

“Just what do you remember?”

“That journey through the earth—”

“You been reading Jules Verne lately?”

“Never read it. But that long journey down, down—miles and miles—I can never forget it! I’ve had a globe to look at, and I suppose I must have started thousands of miles from here—”

“Oh, now, come off—”

“Well, it’s no use. I can’t make anybody believe it, but it’s the truth!”

“Write it up for the movies. The Man Who Fell Through the Earth would be a stunning title!”

“Now you’re guying me again. Guess I’ll shut up on that subject. But I’ll stick you for one more helping-hand act. Where can I get a room to live in for a short time?”

“Why a short time?”

“Because I must take a dinky little cheap place at first, then soon, I’ll be on my feet, financially speaking, and I can move to decenter quarters. You see, I’m going to ask you after all to trust me with a few shekels, right now, and I’ll return the loan, with interest, at no far distant date.”

His calm assumption of success in a business way impressed me favorably. Undoubtedly, he had been one accustomed to making and spending money in his previous life, and he took it as a matter of course. But his common sense, which had by no means deserted him, made him aware that he could get no satisfactory position without some sort of credentials.

As he talked he was idly, it seemed, unconsciously, drawing on the paper pad that lay on the table at his elbow—delicate penciled marks that resolved themselves into six-sided figures, whose radii blossomed out into beautiful tendrils or spikes until they formed a perfect, harmonious whole; each section alike, just as in a snow crystal.

They were so exquisitely done that I marveled at his peculiar gift.

“You ought to design lace,” I observed; “those designs are too fine for papers or carpets.”

“Perhaps so,” he returned, seriously gazing at his drawings. “Anyway, I’ll design something—and it’ll be something worthwhile!”

“Maybe you were an engraver,” I hazarded, “before you—”

“Before I fell through the earth? Maybe I was. Well, then, suppose tomorrow I so far encroach on your good offices as to go with you to see the firm you mentioned. Or, if you’ll give me a letter of introduction—”

“Do you know your way around New York?”

“I’m not sure. I have a feeling I was in New York once—a long time ago, but I can’t say for certain.”

“I’ll go with you then. I’ll call for you tomorrow, and escort you to the office I have in mind, and also, look up a home and fireside that appeals to you.”

“The sort that appeals to me is out of the question at present,” he said, firmly determined to put himself under no greater obligation to me than need be. “I’ll choose a room like the old gentleman in the Bible had with a bed and a table and a stool and a candlestick.”

“You remember your literature all right.”

“I do, mostly; though I’ll confess I read of that ascetic individual since I’ve been here. The hospital is long on Bibles and detective stories, and short on belles-lettres. Well, so long, old man!”

I went away, pondering. It was a strange case, this of Case Rivers. I smiled at the name he had chosen.

He was positively a well-educated and well-read man. His speech gave me a slight impression of an Englishman, and I wondered if he might be Canadian. Of course, I didn’t believe an atom of his yarn about coming from Canada to our fair city via the interior of the globe—but he may have had a lapse of memory that included his railroad journey, and dreamed that he came in some fantastic way.

And then, as is usual, when leaving one scene for another, my thoughts flew ahead to my next errand, which was a visit to Police Headquarters.

Here Chief Martin gave me a lot of new information. It seemed they had unearthed damaging evidence in the case of George Rodman, and he was, without a doubt, a malefactor—but in what particular branch of evil the Chief omitted to state. Nor could any rather broad hints produce any result. At last I said:

“Why don’t you arrest Rodman, then?”

“Not enough definite evidence. I’m just about sure that he killed Gately, and I think I know why, but I can’t prove it—yet. Your statement that his head shadowed on that glass door was the same head you saw the day of the murder, is our strongest point—”

“Oh, I didn’t say that!” I cried, aghast; “I do say it looked like the same head, but I wouldn’t swear that it was!”

“Well, I think it was, and though we can’t connect up the pistol with Rodman—”

“Did you get the pistol from the Boston man?”

“Yes; Scanlon brought home that bacon. But careful grilling failed to get any more information from Lusk, the man who found the pistol. He tells a straight tale of his visit to the Puritan Building, and his business there, all corroborated by the people he called on. He found that pistol, just as he says he did. And, of course, I knew he told the truth in his letter. If he were involved, or had any guilty knowledge of the crime, he surely wouldn’t write to tell us of it! So now we have the pistol, and we know it was picked up in the tenth floor hall near Rodman’s door—but that proves nothing, since we can’t claim it is Rodman’s weapon. It may be, of course, but there’s nothing to show it.”

“What does Rodman say for himself?”

“Denies everything. Says he had the merest nodding acquaintance with Gately—this we know is a lie!—says he knew there was an elevator door in his room, but he had never used it, nor even opened it. Said he hung a big war map over it because it was a good place for a map. We’ve no living witness to give a shred of evidence against Rodman, except your statement about his shadow—and that is uncertain at best.”

“Yes, it is. I do say it looked like Rodman’s head—that is, I mean, Rodman’s head looked like the one I saw that day. But other heads might look as much like it.”

“That’s the trouble. George Rodman is a slick chap, and what he does that he doesn’t want known, doesn’t get known! But I’m onto him! And I’ll bet I’ll get him yet. He’s so comfoundedly cool that all I say to him rolls off like water off a duck’s back. He knows I’ve got no proof, and he’s banking on that to get through.”

“What about Jenny? Can’t she tell you anything?”

“She knows nothing about Rodman. And that very point proves that if he visited Gately often, as I think he did, he came and went by that private elevator which connected their two offices, as well as made a street exit for either or both of them.”

“Did old man Boyd ever see Rodman leave the Matteawan by way of that elevator?”

“He says he never did, but sometimes I think Rodman has fixed him.”

“And Jenny, too, maybe.”

“Maybe. And here’s another thing. There’s somebody called ‘The Link,’ who figures largely in the whole affair, but figures secretly. I won’t say how I found this little joker, but if I can dig up who ‘The Link’ is, I’ve made a great stride toward success.”

Naturally, I said nothing about Pennington Wise to the Chief of Police, but I made a mental note of “The Link” to report to the detective.

“Reward’s offered,” we were suddenly informed, as Foxy Jim Hudson burst into the room.

“For what?” asked the Chief, a little absent-mindedly.

“For information leading to the whereabouts of Amory Manning.”

Martin wheeled round in his chair to look at his subordinate. “Who offered it? How much?”

“That’s the queer part, Chief. Not the amount—that’s five thousand dollars, but it’s a person or persons unknown who will put up the kale. It’s done through the firm of Kellogg and Kellogg—about the whitest bunch of lawyers in town. I mean whoever offers that reward is somebody worthwhile. No shyster business. I’m for it—the money, I mean. Do you know, Chief, the disappearance of that Manning chap is in some way connected with the Gately murder? I’ve got a hunch on that. And here’s how I dope it out. Manning saw Rodman—well, perhaps he didn’t see him shoot, but he saw something that incriminated Rodman, and so he—Rodman, had to get Manning out of the way. And did! You see, Friend Rodman is not only a deep-dyed scoundrel—but the dye was ‘made in Germany’!”

“Well, I’m glad the reward is offered,” commented the Chief. “Now some rank outsider’ll pipe up and speak his little piece.”

“Meaning anybody in particular?” I asked.

With that peculiarly irritating trick of his, Chief Martin not only made no reply but gave no evidence of having heard my question. He went on:

“That makes two rewards. The Puritan Trust Company has offered five thousand for the apprehension of Gately’s murderer. This other five thousand adds to the excitement and ought to produce a good result.”

“I’m out for both,” announced Hudson. “Can’t say I expect to get ’em, but I’ll make a fierce stab at it. Rodman has an awful big income, and no visible means of support. That fact ought to help.”

“How?” I asked.

“Oh, it proves to my mind that he was mixed up in lucrative business that he didn’t—well—advertise. ‘The Link’ was mixed in, too. That is—I suppose—‘The Link’ was a sort of go-between, who enabled Rodman to transact his nefarious deals secretly.”

“Well, Foxy, you know a lot,” and the Chief laughed good-humoredly.

I felt that I now knew a lot, too, and as I went away I determined to see Penny Wise at once, and report all I had learned. I dropped in first at my own office, and found Norah in a brown study, her hands behind her head and a half-written letter in her typewriter.

She gazed at me absently, and then, noting my air of excitement, she became alert and exclaimed, “What’s happened? What do you know new?”

“Heaps,” I vouchsafed, and then I told her, briefly, of Rodman’s probable guilt and also of the offered rewards.

“Jenny’s your trump card,” she said after a thoughtful silence. “That girl knows a good deal that she hasn’t told. I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s in Rodman’s employ.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, she’s too glib. She admits so many things that she has seen or heard and then when you ask her about others, she is a blank wall. Now, she does know about them, but she won’t tell. Why? Because she’s paid not to.”

“Then how can we get around her?”

“Pay her more.” And Norah returned to her typing. But she looked up again to say: “Mrs. Russell called here about an hour ago.”

“She did! What for?”

“I don’t know. She wanted to see you. She was a bit forlorn, so I talked to her a little.”

“I’m glad you did. Poor lady, she feels her brother’s absence terribly.”

“Yes; we discussed it. She thinks he has been killed.”

“Has she any reason to think that?”

“No, except that she dreamed it.”

“A most natural dream for a nervous, worried woman.”

“Of course. I wonder if she knows there’s a reward offered for Mr. Manning?”

“Maybe she offered it—through the Kellogg people.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Pray, how do you know, oh, modern Cassandra?”

“I don’t know your old friend Cassandra, but I do know Mrs. Russell isn’t offering any five thousand dollars. She can’t afford it.”

“Why, she’s a rich woman.”

“She passes for one, and, of course, she isn’t suffering for food or clothes. But she is economizing. She was wearing her last year’s hat and muff, and she maids herself.”

“Perhaps she wore her old clothes because she was merely out to call on my unworthy self.”

“No. She was on her way to a reception. They’re her best clothes now. And a tiny rip in one glove and a missing snap-fastener on her bodice proves she keeps no personal lady’s maid, as people in her position usually do. So, I’m sure she isn’t offering big reward money, though she loves her brother.”

“You’re a born detectivess, Norah. You’ll beat Penny Wise at his own game, if he doesn’t watch out!”

“Maybe,” said Norah, and she laid her fingertips gracefully back on her typewriter keys.

CHAPTER XII

The Link

It was the next afternoon that Penny Wise came into my office. It was his first visit there, and I gave him a hearty welcome. Norah looked so eagerly expectant that I introduced him to her, for I couldn’t bear to disappoint the girl by ignoring her.

Wise was delightfully cordial toward her, and indeed Norah’s winsome personality always made people friendly.

I had tried to get in touch with the detective the day before but he was out on various errands, and I missed him here and there, nor could we get together until he found this leisure.

I told him all I had learned from the police, but part of it was already known to him. He was greatly interested in the news which he had not heard before, that there was somebody implicated, who was called “The Link.”

“That’s the one we want!” he cried; “I suspected some such person.”

“Man or woman?” asked Norah, briefly, and Wise glanced at her.

“Which do you think?”

“Woman,” she replied, and Penny Wise nodded his head. “Yes, I’ve no doubt ‘The Link’ is a woman, and a mighty important factor in the case.”

“But I don’t understand,” I put in. “What does she link?”

“Whom—not what,” said Wise, and he looked very serious. “Of course, you must realize, Brice, there’s a great big motive behind this Gately murder, and there’s also a big reason for Amory Manning’s disappearance. The two are connected—there’s no doubt of that—but that doesn’t argue Manning the murderer, of course. No, this Link is a woman of parts—a woman who is of highest value to the principals in this crime, and who must be found, and that at once!”

“Did she have to do with Mr. Gately?” asked Norah, her gray eyes burning with interest.

“I—don’t—know.” Wise’s hesitating answer was by no means because of disinclination to admit his ignorance, but because he was thinking deeply himself. “Look here, Brice, can’t we go over Gately’s rooms now? I don’t want to ask permission of the police, but if the Trust Company people would let us in—”

“Of course,” I responded, and I went at once to the vice-president for the desired permission.

“It’s all right,” I announced, returning with the keys, “come ahead.”

We went into the beautiful rooms of the late bank president.

Pennington Wise was impressed with their rich and harmonious effects, and his quick eyes darted here and there, taking in details. With marvelous swiftness he went through the three rooms of the suite nodding his head as he noted the special points of which he had been told. In the third room—the Blue Room—he glanced about, raised the map from the wall, and dropped it back in place, opened the door to the hall, and closed it again, and then turned back to the middle room, the office of Amos Gately, and apparently, to the detective’s mind, the principal place of interest.

He sat down in the fine big swivel-chair, whose velvet cushioning deprived it of all look of an ordinary desk-chair, and mused deeply as his eyes fairly devoured the desk fittings. Nothing had been disturbed, that I noticed, except that the telephone had been set up in its right position, and also the chair which I had found overturned was righted.

Wise fingered only a few things. He picked up the penholder, a thick magnificent affair made of gold.

“Probably a gift from his clerks,” said I, smiling at the ornate and ostentatious looking thing. “All the other gimcracks are in better taste.”

Pennington Wise opened the desk drawers. There was little to see, for all financial papers had been taken away by Mr. Gately’s executors.

“Here’s a queer bunch,” Wise observed, as he picked up a packet of papers held together by a rubber band. He sorted them out on the desk.

They were sheets of paper of various styles, each bearing the address or escutcheon of some big city hotel. Many of the principal hostelries of New York were represented among them. Each sheet bore a date stamped on it with an ordinary rubber dating-stamp.

“Important, if true,” commented Wise.

“If what’s true?” asked Norah, bluntly.

“My deductions,” he returned. “These letters, if we can call them letters, doubtless were sent to Mr. Gately at separate times and in separate envelopes.”

“They were,” I informed him. “One came the morning after his death.”

“It did! Which one?”

“It isn’t here. All the new mail went to his lawyer.”

“We must get hold of it!”

“But—do tell me what’s the import of a blank sheet of paper?”

“These aren’t blank,” and he pointed to the stamped dates. “They are very far from blank!”

“Only a date—on a plain sheet of paper—what does that mean?”

“Perhaps nothing—perhaps everything.”

It wasn’t like Penny Wise to be cryptic, and I gathered that the papers were really of value as evidence. “Has the writing been erased?” I hazarded.

“Probably not. No. I don’t think so.” He scrutinized more closely.

“No,” he concluded, “nothing like that. The message is all told on the surface, and he who runs may read.”

“Read, ‘The Waldorf-Astoria, December 7.’” I scoffed. “And is the reader greatly enlightened?”

“Not yet, but soon,” Wise murmured, as he kept up his investigation. “Ha!” he went on, “as the actor hath it—what have we here!”

He was now scrutinizing the ends of two burnt cigarettes, left on the ash-tray of the smoking-set.

“The lady has left her initials! How kind of her!”

“Why, Hudson studied those and couldn’t make out any letters,” I exclaimed.

“Blind Hudson! These very dainty and expensive cigarettes belonged to a fair one, whose name began with K and S—or S and K. Be careful how you touch it, but surely you can see that the tops of the letters though scorched, show definitely enough to know they must be K and S.”

“They are!” cried Norah; “I can see it now.”

“Couldn’t that S be an O?” I caviled.

“Nope,” and Wise shook his head. “The two, though both nearly burnt away, show for sure that the letters are K and S. Here’s a find! Does Miss Raynor smoke?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “I’ve never seen her do so—and she doesn’t seem that type. And then—the initials—”

“Oh, well, she might have had some of her friends’ cigarettes with her. I was only thinking it must have been a pretty intimate caller who would sit here and smoke with Mr. Gately—here are his own cigar stubs you see and of course, Miss Raynor came into my mind. Eliminating her we have, maybe, the lady of the hatpin.”

“And the powder-paper!” cried Norah.

“Yes, they all seem to point to a very friendly caller, who smoked, who took off her hat, and who powdered her nose, all in this room, and all on the day Mr. Gately was killed. For, of course, the whole place was cleaned and put in order every day.”

“And there was the carriage check,” I mused; “perhaps she left that.”

“Carriage check?” asked Wise.

“Yes, a card like a piece of Swiss cheese—you know those perforated carriage-call checks?”

“I do. Where is it?”

“Hudson took it. But he won’t get anything out of it, and you might.”

“Perhaps. I must see it, anyway. Also, I want to see Jenny—the young stenographer who was—”

“Shall I get her here?” offered Norah.

“Yes,” Wise began, but I cut him short.

“I’ve got to go home,” I said. “I promised Rivers I’d see him this afternoon, and take him on some errands. Suppose I go now, and you go with me, Mr. Wise, and suppose Norah gets Jenny and brings her round to my rooms. We can have the interview there; Rivers may not come till later, but I must be there to receive him.”

So Penny Wise and I went down to my pleasant vine and figtree, and as we went, I told him about Case Rivers.

He was interested at once, as he always was in anything mysterious, and he said, “I’m glad to see him. What a strange case! Can he be the missing Manning?”

“Not a chance,” I replied. “The two men are totally dissimilar in looks and in build. Manning is heavy—almost stocky. Rivers is gaunt and lean. Also, Manning is dark-haired and full-blooded, while Rivers is pale and has very light hair. I tried to make out a resemblance, but it can’t be done. However, Case Rivers is interesting on his own account;” and I told him the story of his journey through the earth.

He laughed. “Hallucination, of course,” he said; “but it might easily lead to the discovery of his identity. That amnesic-aphasia business always fascinates me. That is, if I’m convinced it’s the real thing. For, you know, it’s a fine opportunity to fake loss of memory.”

“There’s no fake in this case, I’m positive,” I hastened to assure him; “I’ve taken a decided liking to Rivers, and I mean to keep in touch with him, for when he regains his memory I want to know about it.”

“Pulled out of the river, you say?”

“Yes, a tugboat picked him up, drowned and frozen, it was supposed. He was taken to the morgue, and bless you, if he didn’t show signs of life when he thawed out a little. So they went to work on him and revived him and sent him over to Bellevue where he became a celebrated case.”

“I should think so. No clothes or any identification?”

“Not a rag. Or rather only a few rags of underwear—but nothing that was the slightest clue.”

“What became of his clothes?”

“Nobody knows. He was found drifting, unconscious, apparently dead, and entirely nude save the fragments of underclothing.”

“Those fragments have been kept?”

“Oh, yes; but they mean nothing. Just ordinary material—good—but nothing individual about them.”

“Where was he picked up?”

“I don’t know exactly, but not far from the morgue, I believe. It was the same day as the Gately murder, that’s why I remember the date. It was a dreadfully cold snap, the river was full of ice and it’s a wonder he wasn’t killed, as well as knocked senseless.”

“Was he knocked senseless?”

“I’m not sure, but he was unconscious from cold and exposure and very nearly frozen to death.”

“And his memory now?”

“Is perfect in all respects, except he doesn’t know who he is.”

“A fishy tale!”

“No; you won’t say so after you’ve seen him. When I say his memory is perfect, I mean regarding what he has read or has studied. But it is his personal recollections that have gone from him. He has no remembrance of his home or his friends or his own identity.”

“Can’t you deduce his previous occupation?”

“I can’t. Perhaps you can. He can draw, and he is well-read, that’s all I know.”

We were at my rooms by that time, and going up, we found Case Rivers already there awaiting us. I lamented my lack of promptness, but he gracefully waived my apology.

“It’s all right,” he smiled in his good-humored way, “I’ve been browsing among your books and having the time of my life.”

I introduced the two men, and told Rivers that Wise was the famous detective I had mentioned to him.

“I’m downright glad to know you,” Rivers said, earnestly; “if you can do a bit of deduction as to who I am, I’ll be under deepest obligation. I give you myself as a clue.”

“Got a picture of Amory Manning?” asked Wise, abruptly.

I handed him a folded newspaper, whose front page bore a cut of Manning, and the story of his mysterious disappearance.

Wise studied the picture and compared it with the man before him.

“Totally unlike,” he said, disappointedly.

“Not a chance,” laughed Rivers; “I wish I could step into that chap’s shoes; but you see, I came from far away.”

“Tell me about that trip of yours,” asked Wise.

“Don’t know much to tell,” returned Rivers; “but what I do know, I know positively, so I’ll warn you beforehand not to chuckle at me, for I won’t stand it!”

Rivers showed a determination that I liked. It proved that I was right in ascribing a strong character to him. He would stand chaffing as well as anyone I knew, but not on the subject of his fall through the earth.

“I don’t know when or where I started on my memorable journey, but I distinctly remember my long, dark fall straight down through the earth. Now it would seem impossible, but I can aver that I entered in some very cold, arctic sort of country, and I came on down feet first, till I made exit in New York. I was found, but how I got into the river, I don’t know.”

“You were clothed when you started?”

“I can only say that I assume I was. I’m a normal, decent sort of man, and I can’t think I’d consciously set out on a trip of any sort undressed! But I’ve no doubt my swashing around in the ice-filled river did for my clothes. Probably, as related by the Ancient Mariner, ‘the ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around: it cracked and growled and—something or other—and howled, like noises in a swound.’ You see, I still know my Familiar Quotations by heart.”

“That’s a queer phase,” and Wise shook his head. “It may be you are a poet—”

“Well, I haven’t poetized any since my recrudescence.”

“And that’s another queer thing,” pursued the detective. “Most victims of aphasia can’t remember words. You are exceptionally fluent and seem to have a wide vocabulary.”

“I admit it all,” and Rivers looked a little weary, as if he were tired of speculating on his own case.

“Now, to change the subject, how are you progressing, Mr. Wise, with your present work? How goes the stalking of the murderer?”

“Haven’t got him yet, Mr. Rivers, but we’ve made a good start. You know the details?”

“Only the newspaper accounts, and such additional information as Mr. Brice has given me. I’m greatly interested—for—tell it not to Gath detectives—I fancy I’ve a bent toward sleuthing myself.”

Pennington Wise smiled. “You’re not alone in that,” he said, chaffingly, but so good-naturedly that Rivers took no offense.

“I suppose it’s your reflected light that makes everybody who talks with you feel that way,” he came back. “Well, if you get up a stump, lean on me, Grandpa—I’m ’most seven.”

And then we all three discussed the case, in all its phases, and though Rivers said nothing of great importance, he showed such an intellectual grasp of it all, and responded so intelligently to Wise’s theories and opinions that the two soon became most friendly.

The announcement of the rewards stirred Rivers to enthusiasm.

“I’m going to get ’em!” he cried; “both of ’em! With all due respect to you, Mr. Wise, I’m going to cut under and win out! Don’t say I didn’t warn you, and hereafter all you say will be used against you! If there’s one thing I need more than another it’s ten thousand dollars—I could even do with twenty! So, here goes for Rivers, the swiftsure detective!”

Not a bit offended, Penny Wise laughed outright.

“Go ahead, my boy,” he cried; “here’s a bargain; you work with me, and I’ll work with you. If we get either Manning or the murderer or both, then either or both rewards shall be yours. I’ll be content with what else I can get out of it.”

“Done!” and Case Rivers was jubilant. “Perhaps Manning is the murderer,” he said, thoughtfully.

“No,” I put in. “That won’t do. Manning is in love with Miss Raynor, and he wouldn’t queer his cause by killing her guardian.”

“But Guardy didn’t approve of Suitor Manning,” Rivers said.

“No; but I know Manning and you don’t—well, that is, I know him only slightly. But I’m sure he’s not the man to shoot a financial magnate and a first-class citizen just because he frowned on his suit. Try again, Rivers.”

“All right: what you say goes. But I’m just starting in, you know. And, by the way, I’m to get a job of some sort today—yes?”

He looked at me inquiringly, but Wise answered. “Wait a bit, Rivers, as to that. If you’ll agree, I’ll grubstake you for a fortnight or so, and you can help me. Really, I mean it, for as a stranger you can go to places, and see people, where I can’t show my familiar face. Then, when you get the two rewards you can repay me my investment in you. And if you fail to nail the ten thousand, I’ll take your note.”

“I’ll go you!” said Rivers, after a moment’s thought. “You’re a brick, Penny Wise!”

A tap at the door announced Norah, and with her came Jenny Boyd. Nor was Jenny dragged unwillingly—she seemed eager to enter—but her absurd little painted face wore a look of stubbornness and her red lips were shut in a determined pout.

“Jenny knows who ‘The Link’ is, and she won’t tell,” Norah declared, as a first bit of information.

“Oh, yes, she will,” and Penny Wise winked at the girl. He really gave a very knowing wink, as who should say: “We understand each other.”

As they had never met before, I watched to see just how Jenny would take it, and to my surprise she looked decidedly frightened.

Wise saw this too—doubtless he brought about the effect purposely—but in a moment Jenny regained her poise and was her saucy self again.

“I don’t know for sure,” she said, “and so I don’t want to get nobody into trouble by suspicioning them.”

“You won’t get anybody into trouble,” Wise assured her, “unless she has made the trouble for herself. Let’s play a game, Jenny—let’s talk in riddles.”

Jenny eyed him curiously, and then, as he smiled infectiously, she did, too.

“Now,” went on Wise, “this is the game. I don’t know, of course, whom you have in mind, and you don’t know whom I have in mind, so we’ll play the game this way: I’ll say, ‘I know she is a clever woman.’ Now you make a truthful statement about her.”

Enthralled by his manner, Jenny said, almost involuntarily, “I know she is a wrong one!”

“I know she’s pretty,” said Wise.

“I know she isn’t!” snapped Jenny.

“I know she is black-haired and dresses well and owns a scarab hatpin.”

“I know that, too,” and Jenny was breathless with interest.

“No; that won’t do. You must know something different from my know.”

“Well, I know she’s a friend of Mr. Rodman.”

“And of Mr. Gately,” added Wise.

“Oh, no, sir, I don’t think so!” Jenny’s surprise was unfeigned.

“Well, I know she’s a telegraph girl.”

“Yes: and I know she has more money to spend than she gets for a salary.”

“I know she’s a good girl.”

“Oh, yes, sir—that way. But she—”

“She smokes cigarettes.”

“Yes; she does. Oh, I think that’s awful.”

“Well, it’s your turn. You know she’s ‘The Link’?”

“I know she’s been called that, but it isn’t a regular nickname, and I don’t know what it means.”

“Where is she?”

“Her work, you mean?”

“Yes; she’s in the company’s office—” Here Jenny whispered the address to Wise.

“Good girl,” he commented. “Keep it dark. No use in telling all these people!”

He turned to my telephone, then said: “No, Brice, you do it. Call Headquarters and tell the Chief to arrest—what’s her name, Jenny?”

“I—I didn’t say, sir.” The girl’s caution was returning.

“Say now, then,” commanded Wise. “I know, anyway. It begins with S.”

“Her first name—yes, sir.”

“And the last name with K. You see I know! So, out with it!”

“Sadie Kent,” whispered Jenny, her nerves beginning to go to pieces at realizaton of what she had done.

“Yes, of course. Sadie Kent. Go ahead, Brice. Fix it all up—and go to the telegraph office yourself. Meet the officers there. Scoot!”

I scooted. The strong arm of the law works swiftly when it wills to do so. Within half an hour Sadie Kent was arrested at her key in the telegraph office on charge of stealing confidential telegrams sent by officials in Washington to munition plants and steamship companies and delivering them to persons who she knew would transmit them to the German Foreign Office.

When approached, the girl—the woman rather—put up a bold bluff, but it was of no avail. She was taken into custody, and all her appeals for mercy denied. All but one. She begged so hard to be allowed to telephone to her mother that Hudson, who was present, softened.

“You can’t, my lady,” he said, “but I’ll have it done for you. Mr. Brice, now, maybe he’ll do it.”

“Oh, if you would be so kind,” and the beautiful brunette, for she was that, gave me a grateful look. “Just call 83649 Greenwich Square, and ask for Mrs. Kent. Then tell her, please, that—that I won’t be home tonight. That’s all.”

Her voice broke and she sobbed softly in her handkerchief.

They took her away, to be detained pending developments. I made the call and gave the message exactly as she had asked me. A pleasant voice responded, saying the speaker was Mrs. Kent, and she thanked me for sending word.

I hurried back to my rooms. Wise and Rivers were still there but Norah and Jenny had left. I had no sooner got my coat off than Zizi came flying in.

“Oh, everybody,” she cried, in a whirl of excitement, “Olive’s gone! She’s kidnaped or abducted or something. A telephone message came and she flew off, telling nobody but Mrs. Vail, and telling her not to tell!”

“Where’s she gone?” I cried, flinging back into my coat.

“Nobody knows. I only got it out of Mrs. Vail this minute, and then only by threatening her with all sorts of horrors if she didn’t tell me. She doesn’t know where Olive’s gone—nobody knows—but whoever telephoned said he had Amory Manning with him, just for a few moments and for her to come at once if she wanted to see him. A car would come for her at four o’clock, exactly, and she was to get in and ask no questions. And she did—and she told Mrs. Vail that as soon as she got to Mr. Manning she would telephone back—in about fifteen minutes. And now it’s over an hour! and no word from her! That stupid old woman just walks up and down and wrings her hands!”

“I should think she would! Which way shall we look, Wise?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure!” and for once the resourceful detective was absolutely at a loss.

“Oh, Penny Wise,” and Zizi burst into tears, “if you don’t know what to do, nobody does! Olive will be killed or held for ransom or some dreadful thing! What can we do?”

But the dull silence that fell on us all proved that no one present was able to offer any suggestion.

CHAPTER XIII

Olive’s Adventure

“Give me a handkerchief, somebody!” commanded Zizi, and not without reason, for her own tiny wisp of cambric was nothing but a wet ball, which she was futilely dabbing into her big black eyes.

I hurried into my bedroom and hastily grabbed a fresh handkerchief from a drawer, which I brought to the excited girl.

“Thanks,” she said, as she grasped it and plied it diligently; “now, men, we must get busy! It’s after five o’clock, Olive went away before four—anything may have happened to her—we must rescue her!”

“We will!” exclaimed Case Rivers, showing more energy than I knew he possessed. “What about ‘The Link,’ Mr. Brice?”

As quickly as I could, I detailed what had happened at the telegraph office, where Sadie Kent had been taken into custody by Hudson’s men.

“Did she go quietly?” asked Penny Wise.

“She did not!” I returned; “she put up a fearful fight, tore up a lot of papers from a desk drawer, and lit into the policemen like a tiger cat! She tried to bite Hudson, and yet, he was the one who kind-heartedly let her telephone to her mother.”

“What!” cried Rivers, “he let her do that!”

“I did it myself, really,” I said; and I told how Sadie had begged for the privilege.

“There you are!” Rivers said, positively. “That telephone message was not to her mother!”

“But I called her up,” I explained, “and she said she was Mrs. Kent.”

“That may be,” and Rivers shook his head; “but, don’t you see, that was a code call—a warning. The person who received it, mother or grandmother, caught on to the state of things and set machinery in motion that resulted in the kidnaping of Miss Raynor.”

“What for?” I asked, blankly.

“Revenge, probably, but there may be other villainies afoot. Am I right, Mr. Wise?”

“Yes, and mighty quick-witted. Then the next step is to go to the ‘mother’s’ house.”

“Yes, if we can trace it. It may be a call within a call; I mean, the number Mr. Brice got may be merely a go-between—a link—”

“Try it, anyway,” implored Zizi; “every minute is precious. I’m so afraid for Miss Olive. You know, she’s spunky—she won’t submit easily to restraint, and you don’t know what they may do to her!”

“Get Information first,” directed Wise, as I started for the telephone. “Find the address of the number you called. You remember it?”

“Yes; of course.” And in a few moments I learned that the house was down in Washington Square.

“Get a taxi,” said Zizi, already putting on her long black cape, which swirled round the slender figure as she flung one end over her shoulder.

She flew to a mirror, and was dabbing her straight little nose with a powder-puff as she talked.

“We’ll all go down there, and I don’t think we’ll have to look any further. Miss Olive is there—I’m dead sure! Held by the enemy! But she’s game, and I don’t believe we’ll be too late, if we hustle like a house afire!”

And so, with the greatest speed consistent with safety, we taxied down to the house in Washington Square.

The Kent apartment was on the third floor, and as Zizi dashed up the stairs, not waiting for the elevator, we three men followed her.

Zizi’s ring at the bell brought a middle-aged woman to the door, who looked at us rather blankly.

I was about to speak, when Zizi, insinuating her small self through the partly opened door, said softly:

“We’ve a message from ‘The Link.’”

It acted like magic, and the woman’s face changed to an expression of welcome and serious anxiety, as we all went in.

It was rather a pretentious apartment, with fine furnishings in ornate taste. We saw no one save the woman who admitted us, and heard no sound from other rooms.

“You expected it?” and Zizi’s air of secret understanding was perfect.

“Expected what?” said Mrs. Kent, sharply, for she was apparently on her guard.

“Sadie’s arrest,” and Zizi’s black eyes narrowed as she looked keenly at the other.

But the woman was not to be trapped. She glanced at us each in turn, and seemed to conclude we were not friendly visitors for all Zizi’s pretense.

“I know nothing of any arrest,” she said, evenly; “I think you have mistaken the house.”

“I think not,” and Penny Wise looked at her sternly. “Your bluff won’t go, madam—Sadie, ‘The Link,’ is arrested, and the game is up. Will you answer questions or will you wait until you, too, are arrested?”

“I have nothing to say,” she mumbled, but her voice trembled, and her nerve was deserting her. Inadvertently she glanced toward the closed door of the next room, and Zizi’s quick eyes followed the glance.

“Is Miss Raynor in there?” she flung out so quickly that Mrs. Kent gasped. But she recovered her poise at once and said, “I don’t know what you mean—I don’t know any Miss Raynor.”

“Oh, tut, tut!” and Zizi grinned at her; “don’t tell naughty stories! Why, I hear Miss Raynor’s voice!”

She didn’t at all, but as she listened, with her head cocked on one side, like a saucy bird, Mrs. Kent’s face showed fear, and she listened also.

A muffled scream was heard—not loud, but clearly a cry for help.

Without further parley, Rivers made a dash for the door and though it was locked, he smashed into the rather flimsy panel and the old hinges gave way.

There, in the adjoining room was Olive Raynor, a handkerchief tied across her mouth and her angry eyes flashing with rage.

Holding her arm was George Rodman, who was evidently trying to intimidate her, but without complete success.

Zizi flew to Olive’s side, and snatched off the handkerchief.

Rodman was perfectly cool. “Let that lady alone,” he said; “she is my affianced wife.”

“Affianced grandmother!” retorted Zizi. “You can’t put that over, Mr. Rodman!”

“Save me!” Olive said, looking from me to Penny Wise and back again. Her glance fell on Rivers, but returned to me, as her face assumed a look of agony.

I couldn’t quite understand, as she must know that with us all there her danger was past.

“Are you his betrothed?” Case Rivers said, bluntly.

“No!” Olive replied, in an indignant tone; “never!”

“Then—” and Rivers seemed about to remove Rodman’s hand from Olive’s arm by force, but Rodman himself spoke up:

“One moment, please,” he said, quietly, and bending over, he whispered in Olive’s ear.

She turned deathly white, her lips quivered, and she seemed about to fall. Whatever the brief words were, they wrought a marvelous change in the girl’s attitude. She lost her air of defiant wrath, and seemed a helpless, hopeless victim of the man who held her.

“Are you engaged to me?” Rodman said, looking at Olive, with a threatening scowl.

“Yes,” she managed to whisper, but so agonized was her face that it was palpable she spoke under coercion.

I was uncertain what to do; Wise, too, looked nonplussed, but Rivers, though a stranger to Olive, seemed imbued with an irresistible chivalry, and drawing nearer to her, he said:

“Is that man forcing you to say that against your will?”

Rodman’s grip tightened on Olive’s arm, and his glowering face looked sternly into hers. She made no reply in words, but her piteous glance told all too clearly that Rivers’ assumption was correct.

And yet, what could we do? Olive had assented to Rodman’s assertion, and we could scarcely demand a girl from her fiancé.

Zizi mastered the situation by saying, triumphantly: “We’ve got ‘The Link!’ She’s under arrest!”

“What!” cried Olive, and then, dropping her arm, Rodman whirled toward her:

“There!” he cried, “your secret is out! Unless—” He made a gesture as if to put his arm round her.

With a cry of revulsion, Olive shrank from him, and her face showed that she preferred his threatening attitude to his endearing one.

“You let that lady alone, unless she desires your attentions,” said Rivers, his innate desire to protect a woman in distress showing in his repressed eagerness to get at Rodman.

“You mind your own business!” shouted Rodman, angrily, as he put out his arm and drew Olive to him. “You’re mine, now, aren’t you, dearie?”

The disgust on the girl’s face, and the shrinking of her form as she tried to draw away from the leering face so near hers was too much for Rivers. He assumed a threatening attitude, and said, “You take your hands off that lady! She doesn’t want—”

In defiance, Rodman drew Olive nearer, and raising her bowed head was about to kiss her angry, beautiful face, when she uttered a despairing scream.

That was the match in the powder-keg!

Unable to hold back longer, Rivers sprang forward and wrenched Olive from Rodman’s grasp.

With a snarl, Rodman lunged at Rivers, who deftly stopped him with an uppercut. Rodman came back with a smashing facer, and Rivers replied in kind.

Zizi, who had flown to Olive’s side, and was tenderly soothing her, watched the two men, breathlessly. Something savage in her nature responded to the combat, and she flushed and paled alternately as one or the other of the angry men seemed to have the upper hand.

Olive hid her face in her hands, not wanting to look, but Zizi was with the fight, heart and soul.

It was give and take, with such rapidity that I trembled for Rivers’ safety. Rodman was a formidable antagonist, and far heavier than the gaunt man who met and returned his blows.

But Rivers was skilled, and made up in technique what he lacked in strength.

So desperate was the struggle, so blindly furious the two men, that Pennington Wise and I were fearful of results. With a simultaneous impulse we made a dash to separate the combatants, but were obliged to get back quickly to save ourselves from the rain of blows.

Never had I seen such a wild, unbridled fight compressed into such a short time, and I wondered what Rivers had been in a fighting way before he lost his identity.

Fighting and boxing had never been favorite forms of entertainment with me, but this contest absorbed me. It was primitive, instinctive—the rage of Rodman pitted against the angry indignation of Rivers.

I had not thought of the latter as a weakling, but neither had I looked upon him as a strong man, and I should have judged that in a bout with Rodman he would have gone under.

But not so; his lean, gaunt frame was full of latent strength, his bony fists full of dexterity.

He rushed in, fell back, sidestepped, with the dazzling quickness of a trained fighter. He showed knowledge and skill that amazed me.

Rodman, too, fought for all he was worth, but he impressed me as being not an experienced fighter—and not a fair one.

Wise, too, was watching Rivers with wonder and admiration, and he also kept his alert gaze on Rodman.

Fascinated, we watched as Rodman clinched, and Rivers with a smile, almost of contempt, threw him off. Then Rodman, bellowing like an angry bull, made a head-on rush for Rivers, who neatly sidestepped, letting his furious antagonist have it on the side of his head.

Even this didn’t knock any sense into Rodman, and he was about to plunge again, when Wise, seeing a chance, said:

“Now, Brice!”

Springing in, I hooked my arm around Rivers’ neck, and yanked him away from Rodman, now struggling, half-spent, in Wise’s grasp.

“Let up, Rivers!” I cried, sternly; “what do you mean?”

He glared at me, not sensing what I said, and then, Rodman, breaking loose, came at him madly, Rivers slithered out of my clutch and caught the other a smashing blow on the ear. This, landing just as Rodman was off his balance from his break-away from Wise, spun him around and sent him down with a crash which knocked all the fight out of him, and he made but a half-hearted attempt to rise.

Satisfied, Rivers turned to me, and then, with a half-apologetic glance at Olive, murmured: “Sorry! Couldn’t help it, Miss Raynor. Brute!”

The last was addressed to his fallen foe, and was met by a vindictive glance, but no other retort.

Rodman, however, was pulling himself together and we were of one mind as to our next procedure, which was to get Olive Raynor away from that house.

“Beat it,” Wise decreed; “you’re a good one, Mr. Rivers! My hat’s off to you. Now, if you’re fit, and you look it, will you and Mr. Brice take Miss Raynor home, and I’ll stay here and clear up this little disturbance. Hop along with them, Ziz; I’ll join you all at the house as soon as I can.”

The faithful taxi was waiting, and Rivers and I put the two girls in, and followed them. Rivers was very quiet and seemed preoccupied. He looked not at all like a conqueror, and I guessed that the fight had stirred some chord of remembrance, and he was now struggling with his lost memory. In silence we went most of the way home.

Before we reached the house, however, he shook off his reverie with an impatient gesture that said, as clearly as words could have done, that he had failed to catch the elusive thread that bound him to the past and that he had returned to the present.

Olive saw it, too, and putting out her hand, said, frankly:

“I owe you deep gratitude, Mr. Rivers. I suppose I was in no real danger, with you men there, but I must confess I was glad to have that wretch punished.”

Her lovely face glowed with righteous indignation, and Zizi’s pert little countenance showed deep satisfaction.

“You gave it to him, good and plenty, Mr. Rivers,” she fairly crowed; “it was a treat to see you put it all over him! Now, you’ve knocked him out physically, Penny Wise will mop up the floor with him mentally and morally! What did he do to you, Miss Olive? Why did he make you say you were his girl?”

The look of agony returned to Olive’s face, as if she had just recollected what the man had said to her.

“He threatened me,” she said, slowly; “with an awful threat! I can’t think about it! Oh, I don’t know what to do! I can’t tell it—I can’t tell it to anybody—”

“Wait till you get home,” I counseled her, and Rivers added, “And wait till Mr. Wise comes. He’s the man you must tell, and he will advise you. But, I say, we’re getting at things, eh, Brice? ‘The Link’ under arrest, Wise onto Rodman, and he won’t let go of him, either, and Miss Raynor safe—whew! I feel as if we should just forge ahead now!”

“Sure we will!” declared Zizi, her little face glowing with anticipation. “Never you mind. Miss Olive, dear; whatever that man threatened, Penny Wise will look after him.”

“But—” began Olive, and then stopped, for we had reached her home.

“Oh, my darling child,” exclaimed Mrs. Vail, as we went in, “where have you been? I’ve been nearly crazy!”

I think we all felt a sudden twinge of shame, for none of us had thought to relieve the poor lady’s suspense as to Olive’s fate! We ought to have telephoned, at least. But she was now smiling and happy at the safe return of her charge and eager to know all the details of the adventure.

Both Olive and Zizi went off with Mrs. Vail, who was chattering volubly, and I was left alone with Rivers.

“The fight—on which let me congratulate you—stirred some old memory?” I said, inquiringly.

“For a few moments, yes;” he returned, looking deeply thoughtful. “But it was both vague and evanescent, I couldn’t nail it. Oh!” and he made an impatient gesture, “it is maddening! I seem just on the edge of complete recollection—and, then—it’s gone again, and my mind is a positive blank regarding it. But, it’s no use worrying, Brice,” and he spoke cheerfully, “I’m sure it will come, some day. Until then I shall be Case Rivers, and if I die under the name, I’ll try, at least, not to disgrace it.”

“You didn’t disgrace it today,” I said, heartily. “You put up a first-class fight, and in a righteous cause.”

“I couldn’t stand it to see Miss Raynor bullied by that brute,” he returned, simply, “and then, too, I felt a natural antagonism toward him on my own account. No,” as I started to speak, “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t think I knew him before I lost my memory. Maybe I did, but it wasn’t that that startled me to thinking back. It was something else—some other impression, that made me have a fraction of a reminiscence of something—oh, I don’t know what, but I’m going to take it as an omen of future good fortune.”

CHAPTER XIV

Where is Manning?

“You’re to stay for dinner,” a voice said, speaking from the shadows at the other end of the long room.

As I looked toward it, Zizi’s little white face gleamed between the portières, and in another moment she slid through and was at my side.

“Miss Raynor says so, and Mrs. Vail adds her invitation. They’re going to keep Penny Wise when he returns, and Miss Raynor—”

“Miss Raynor wants to thank Mr. Rivers for his good work,” and Olive herself followed in Zizi’s footsteps. She was smiling now, but her lips were tremulous and her eyes showed unshed tears.

“Nothing to thank me for,” returned Case Rivers, quickly, “on the contrary, I want to apologize for such an exhibition of wrath before a lady. But I confess I lost all self-control when I saw that brute intimidating you. If you absolve me of offense, I am thoroughly glad I did him up! And you do?”

“Indeed, yes!” and Olive’s frank gaze was sincere but sad, too. “I was terribly frightened—and—I am still.”

“Why?” cried Rivers, abruptly, and then added, “but I’ve no right to ask.”

“Yes, you have,” Olive assured him, “but—I’ve no right to tell you. Mr. Rodman holds a threat over my head, and—and—”

Just then Wise arrived, and Mrs. Vail came into the room with him.

Olive welcomed him gladly, and then, as dinner was announced, we all went to the dining-room.

“No discussion of our momentous affairs while we eat,” Wise commanded, and so we enjoyed the occasion as if it were a social affair.

The conversation was interesting, for Pennington Wise was a well-informed man and a good raconteur; Rivers proved to be most entertaining and clever at repartee; and though Olive was very quiet, Mrs. Vail kept up an amusing chatter, and Zizi was her own elfin self and flung out bits of her odd talk at intervals.

We returned to the big library for coffee, and then, almost abruptly, Wise began to question Olive as to her adventure that afternoon.

“Mr. Rivers was quite right,” he said, “in assuming the telephone call sent by Sadie Kent to her ‘mother’ was a trick. Mighty clever of you,” he turned to Rivers, “and it led to the arrest of Rodman. The woman called Mrs. Kent is not Sadie’s mother, but a companion in crime. For Sadie, ‘The Link,’ is a criminal and a deep one! But first, Miss Raynor, let us have your story.”

“When I answered the telephone call,” Olive began, “a man’s voice said, rather brusquely, ‘We have Amory Manning here. If you want to see him, come here at once.’ I said—of course, I was terribly excited—‘Where are you? who are you?’ The voice replied, ‘Never mind all that. You have to make quick decision. If you want to see Manning, a taxi will call for you in five minutes. Tell nobody, or you will queer the whole game. Do you consent?’ I may not give his exact words, but that was his general meaning. I had to think quickly; I did want to see Mr. Manning, and I feared no harm. So I said I agreed to all the stipulations, I would tell no one, and I would go in the taxicab that would come for me.”

“But you told me,” put in Mrs. Vail, who liked to feel her importance.

“Yes,” went on Olive, “I felt I must leave some word, for I had an uneasy feeling that all was not right. If Amory Manning was there, why didn’t he telephone himself? But, I reasoned, he might be, well—in fact, I thought he was—held for ransom, and in that case I was ready and willing to pay it. So, I said nothing to Zizi, for I knew she would tell—”

“Wow! Yes!” came from Zizi’s corner, where she sat on a low ottoman.

“And so, I went alone. The taxi was at the curb when I left this house. I got in, and was taken to the house in Washington Square. I felt no fear until, after Mrs. Kent admitted me, she showed me into a room where I found myself confronted by Mr. Rodman. Mrs. Kent remained with me, but I saw at once she was not friendly.

“‘Where is Mr. Manning?’ I asked. Mr. Rodman only laughed rudely and said he hadn’t the slightest idea. And then I knew it was all a trap—but I didn’t know why I was tricked there. And then,” Olive paused, and a deep blush came over her face, but she shook her head and went bravely on, “then he tried to make love to me. I appealed to Mrs. Kent, but she only laughed scornfully at my distress. He said if I would marry him he would protect me from all suspicion of being implicated in—in the death of my guardian! Of course, that didn’t scare me, and I told him I wasn’t suspected now, by anybody. Then he dropped that line of argument and told me if I didn’t marry him—he would—oh, that part I can’t tell!”

“Blackmail!” said Wise, looking at her intently.

“Yes,” she replied, “and it was an awful threat! Then, he saw I was indignant and not to be intimidated—oh, I pretended to be much more courageous than I really was—and he began to talk more politely and very seriously. He said, if I would call off Mr. Wise and make no further effort to run down my uncle’s murderer, he would send me home safely, and molest me no further. I wouldn’t agree to this; and then he grew ugly again, and lost his temper, and—oh, he talked dreadfully!” Olive shuddered at the recollection, and her lips quivered.

With quick sympathy, Zizi moved noiselessly from her place, and, kneeling at Olive’s side, took her hand. With a grateful glance at the comforting little fingers caressing her own, Olive went on:

“He stormed and he threatened me, and that Kent woman joined in and said terrible things! And I was so frightened I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t any longer—and I didn’t know what to do! And then the bell rang, and Mrs. Kent went to the door, and as I looked hopeful—I suppose, for I welcomed the thought of anybody’s coming—Mr. Rodman threw a handkerchief around my mouth and tied it behind my head. ‘There, my lady,’ he said, ‘you won’t scream for help quite as quickly as you planned to!’ And I couldn’t make a sound! Then, when I heard familiar voices—Zizi’s and Mr. Wise’s, I knew I must make myself heard, and with a desperate effort, I got out a groan or wail for help, though that awful man stood over me with his hand raised to strike me!”

“You poor darling!” exclaimed Mrs. Vail, putting her arm round Olive, “it was fearful! Why, once I heard of a case like that—no, I read it in a book—and the girl fainted!”

“Well, I didn’t faint, but I almost collapsed from sheer fright lest I couldn’t make a loud enough sound to be heard by you people.”

“Oh, we were coming!” said Zizi, “I saw by the old hen’s face she had you boxed up in there, and I was going to do some ground and lofty yelling myself, if Mr. Rivers hadn’t smashed in the door just as he did.”

“I couldn’t hold back,” said Rivers, “I gave way to a blind impulse—and I’m glad I did!”

“I’m glad, too,” and Olive gave him a grateful smile.

“But then,” cried Zizi, “he made you say you were engaged to him—”

“Yes,” and Olive paled as with fear. “I can’t tell about that—”

“You said you weren’t, and then he whispered to you, and then you said you were,” went on Zizi, remorselessly reviewing the scene.

“I know it—but—oh, don’t ask me! Perhaps, I’ll tell—later—if I have to—but—I can’t—I can’t.”

Olive’s head drooped on Zizi’s shoulder, and the eerie little voice said, “There, there—don’t talk any more now, Miss Olive, dear. Penny Wise, you carry on the conversation from this point.”

“All right,” said Wise, “I’ll tell my story. George Rodman is in the hands of the police, but I doubt very much if they can prove anything on him. He’s a sly proposition, and covers his tracks mighty well. Moreover, as to the murder of Mr. Gately, Rodman has a perfect alibi.”

“Your First Lessons in Sleuthing always say, ‘distrust the perfect alibi,’” murmured Zizi, without looking up from her occupation of smoothing Olive’s softly banded hair.

“Yes—manufactured ones. But in this case there seems to be no question. A Federal detective, who has had his eye on Rodman for some time, was in Rodman’s office at the very time Mr. Gately was killed.”

“But Mr. Rodman went down on the same elevator I did, soon after the shooting,” I exclaimed.

“How soon after?”

“Less than half an hour. And Rodman got on at the seventh floor.”

“That’s all right, the Federal Office man knows that. They went down together from the tenth—Rodman’s floor—to the seventh, and then after they looked after something there, Rodman went on down alone.”

“All right,” I said, for I knew that Wise and the Federal Detective were not being hoodwinked by any George Rodman!

“And here’s the situation,” Wise went on; “Sadie Kent is a German telegraph spy. She is called ‘The Link,’ because she has been an important link in the German spy system. A trusted employee and an expert operator of long experience, she has stolen information from hundreds of telegrams and turned it over to a man who transmitted it to Berlin by a secret avenue of communication. A telegram has been sent to Washington asking for a presidential warrant to hold her until the case can be investigated. She is also one large and emphatic wildcat! She bites and scratches with feline ferocity, and is under strong and careful restrictions.”

“And she is the one,” I said, “whose identity we learned from Jenny—and—oh, yes, whose identity you guessed, Mr. Wise, from some cigarette stubs, and—”

“Oh, I say,” Wise interrupted me, shortly, “we must get the truth from her by quizzing, not by clues. We’ve arrested her, now, and—”

Olive stirred uneasily, and Zizi, after a quick, intelligent glance at Wise, which he answered by a nod, rose to her feet, and urged Olive to rise and go with her.

“You’re all in, Miss Olive,” she said, gently, “and I’m going to take you off to sleepy-by. Tell the nice gentlemen good-night, and come along with your Zizi-zoo. Upsy-diddy, now,” and smilingly, Zizi persuaded Olive to go with her. “You come, too, Mrs. Vail,” Zizi added, because, I noticed, of an almost imperceptible nod from Wise in the elder lady’s direction. “We just simpully can’t get along without you.”

Pleased at the flattering necessity for her presence, Mrs. Vail went from the room with the two girls. “I’ll be back,” she called out to us, as she left the room.

“She won’t,” said Wise, decidedly, after the sound of footsteps died away, “Zizi’ll look out for that. Now, Brice, I’ve important new information. I didn’t want to divulge it before Miss Raynor, tonight, for she has had about all she can bear today. But it begins to look as if Sadie Kent sold her stolen telegrams to Rodman, and he—can’t you guess?”

“No,” I said, blankly, and Rivers said, “Tell us.”

“Why, I believe he turned them over to Gately.”

“Gately! Amos Gately mixed up in spy business! Man, you’re crazy!”

“Crazy does it, then! Haven’t we positive proof that Sadie Kent was in Gately’s office the day he was killed?”

“How?” I said, wonderingly. “Did she kill him?”

“Lord, no! But didn’t I size her up from the hatpin? and didn’t your girl trace the powder-paper? and didn’t we see cigarette stubs with the S.K. monogram—in Mr. Gately’s private office—and his own cigar stubs there, too, as if she had been there in intimate chat!”

“Are you sure about the powder-paper?” I cried, impressed by the realization of Norah’s hand in the discovery.

“Yes; we know, at least, that she has bought them from that shop. You see, she has lots of money beside her salary from the telegraph company.”

“Rather!” said Rivers, “if she’s selling Government secrets!”

“Well,” I said, after the whole disclosure began to sink into my brain, “if Sadie Kent sat around in Mr. Gately’s office, smoking and chatting, with her hat off, and her powder-papers in evidence, she was pretty friendly with him!”

“Of course she was,” and Wise looked grave. “That’s what I dread to tell Miss Raynor. For it implicates Amos Gately in some way; either he is mixed up in the spy racket—or—Miss Kent was his friend—socially!”

“Oh, come now,” I said, “don’t let’s say that sort of thing.”

“But, my dear man, unpleasant though it be to assume an intimacy between the bank president and the handsome telegraph girl—yet, isn’t that preferable—to—”

“To brand him with the shameful suspicion of receiving spy secrets!” Rivers completed the sentence. “Yes, it is! The most disgraceful revelations of a liaison would be as nothing compared with the ignominy of spy work!”

“I know that,” I hastened to explain myself, “but I can’t connect either disgrace with Amos Gately! You didn’t know him, Wise, and you, Rivers, didn’t either. Nor did I know him personally—but I did know—and do know, that no breath of suspicion can be attached to Amos Gately’s whole career! Why, he was a synonym for all that is best in finance, in politics, in society! I’m glad you didn’t hint this before Olive Raynor! It would have crushed the poor child.”

“She’ll have to learn it sooner or later,” and Wise shook his head. “There’s no doubt about it in my mind. You see, ‘The Link’ usually took her news to Rodman and he secretly, and by means of the secret elevator, carried it to Gately who gave it over to the agents of the German Government.”

“Do you know this?” asked Rivers.

“I couldn’t get Rodman to admit it, but when I taxed him with something of the sort, he flew into such a rage that I’m sure I struck the truth.”

“Where’s Rodman now?”

“The Department of Justice has his case in hand. They’ll look after him. But I don’t see how we can connect him with the murder of Gately. I don’t for a minute doubt he’d be quite capable of it, but he wasn’t there at the time.”

“Was Sadie Kent?” and Rivers frowned thoughtfully.

“Not at the time of the shooting. Brice, here, can testify to that.”

“Not unless she was in hiding,” I said, “and she wasn’t, for I looked in the cupboards and all that. We seem to have proved Sadie there before the murderer was, but I don’t suspect her of shooting Gately.”

“Nor I,” agreed Wise, “but it was unusual for her to go to Mr. Gately’s office. It must be that she had grown more daring of late, and had some hold over Gately, so that she felt safe in going there.”

“Can’t they get all that out of Sadie?”

“She’s a slippery sort. She pretends to speak frankly, but what she tells means little and is misleading.”

“Where is she?”

“For the moment, down at Kenilworth House. Detained there till they’re sure of the persons working with her.”

“She’ll get away,” said Rivers, “she ought to be in jail.”

Now it was a strange thing, but this casual prophecy of Rivers’ was fulfilled the very next day!

I was in my office, absorbedly conversing with Norah on the all-engrossing subject of the Gately case, when Zizi dashed in.

“Alone I did it!” she exclaimed, and tossing the folds of her voluminous black cape over her shoulder, she folded her arms and assumed the attitude of Napoleon; scowling from under her heavy black brows, though her eyes were dancing.

“What have you done?” I asked, while Norah gazed enchanted at the dramatic little figure.

“Returned the missing ‘Link’ to her rightful owners!”

“What! Sadie?”

“The same. You know, Mr. Rivers said she’d break loose from that Whatchacallit House, and make trouble—also, which she done!”

“Tell us about it,” I urged.

“That’s what I’m here for. Mr. Wise sent me to tell you that—and a lot of other messages. Well,” and Zizi’s black eyes snapped with satisfaction, “somebody called this morning to see Miss Raynor. And that somebody was none other than Sadie, ‘The Link!’ She sent up a different name—I forget what, now—and Miss Olive went down to see her. And she blackmailed Miss Olive good and plenty! You see, little Ziz was listening from behind a convenient portière, and I heard it all. The whole idea was that if Miss Olive would quit all investigations, there would be no tales told. But if she kept up her detective work—that is, if she kept Mr. Wise on the job, then revelations would be made about her guardian, Mr. Gately, that Sadie said would blast his name forever. Olive seemed to understand just what these revelations were, for she didn’t ask, but she was scared to pieces, and was about ready to give in when I slid into the game. But—before I joined the confab I called up Penny Wise on an upstairs telephone and invited him to come along hastily and bring a squad of policemen or something that could hold that ‘Link’!

“Then I sauntered into the library, where the blackmailing session was being held, and I stood by. We had a war of words—‘The Link’ and I—but it didn’t amount to much, for I was really only sparring for time till Penny Wise blew in. But I kept Miss Olive quiet, and I gave ‘The Link’ a song and dance that made her think some! I told her we knew she wrote the blackmailing letter to Miss Olive, signed ‘A Friend,’ and that she could be jailed for that! She wilted some, but carried it off with a high hand and soon Penny came and he had his little helpers along. They were in uniform, and they seemed mighty glad to get back their long-lost friend and comrade, ‘The Link’!”

“You clever little piece!” cried Norah, “to think of your getting that girl again, after she had broken loose! Didn’t they appreciate it?”

“Yes,” and Zizi smiled, modestly; “but it’s all in the day’s work. I don’t care much about appreciation, except from Mr. Wise.”

She had thrown off her long cloak, and her slender, lithe little figure leaned over the back of a chair. “But,” she cried, twirling round suddenly to me, “I did do one more little trick! When they were taking Sadie away, I sidled up to her, and—oh, well, I s’pose I am a direct descendant of some light-fingered gentry—I picked her pocket!”

“What did you get?”

“Her pocket—by which I mean her little leather hand-bag, was never out of her hand for a minute! The way she hung on to it—fairly clutched it—made me think it contained something of interest to our side. So I just picked it on general principles. And I got the goods!”

“What?” cried Norah and I together.

“Some stuff in code, or in cipher—I dunno just what it was. But Penny took it, and he’s tickled to death to get it. Gibberish, of course, but he’ll make it out. He’s clever at ciphers, and it will likely be the final proof of ‘The Link’s’ perfidy—and—” here Zizi’s head drooped, and her eyes saddened—“maybe it will show up Mr. Gately or—”

“Or whom?”

“You know! But,” she brightened again, “here’s something else yet! I’m on the job day and night, you know, and, if you inquire of me, I’d just as lief spill it to you, that Miss Olive is a whole lot interested in that fascinating Mr. Rivers!”

“Oh, now,” and Norah looked reproof at the saucy, smiling girl, “Miss Raynor is the fiancée of Amory Manning.”

“Nixy! she told me she never was engaged to Mr. Manning. And when I tease her about Mr. Rivers, she blushes the loveliest pink you ever saw, and says, ‘Oh, Zizi, don’t be a silly!’ but then she sits and waits for me to be a silly again!”

“But she hasn’t seen Rivers half a dozen times,” I said, smiling at Zizi’s flight of imagination.

“That’s nothing,” she scoffed; “if ever there was a case of love at first sight, those two have got it! They don’t really know it themselves yet, but if Amory Manning wants Miss Olive, he’d better come out of hiding and win her while the winning’s good! And it’s my belief he’d be too late now! And here’s a straw to show which way that wind blows. The picture of Mr. Manning that was on Miss Olive’s dresser has disappeared!”

“That may not mean anything,” I said, for I didn’t think it right to encourage Zizi’s romancing.

“But I asked Miss Olive about it, and she hesitated and stammered, and never did say why she had put it away. And, too, you ought to see her eyes smile when she expects Mr. Rivers to call! He’s making a lace pattern for her, and they have to discuss it a lot! Ohé, oho!”

The mischievous little face took on a gentle, tender look and Norah smiled with the sympathy of one who, like all the rest of the world, loves a lover.

“But,” I said, musingly, “none of this brings us any nearer to the discovery of Amos Gately’s murderer, or to the discovery of Amory Manning—which are the two ends and aims of our present existence.”

“Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Brice,”—Zizi’s face grew very serious—“that those two quests will lead you to the same man?”

I looked at her—stunned to silence.

Then, as suddenly shocked into speech, “No!” I fairly shouted, “it never did!”

CHAPTER XV

Wise’s Pipe Dream

The mystery was a baffling one. I learned from Pennington Wise that he had a pipe dream that Amory Manning had killed Amos Gately.

But, save for the faithful Zizi, he could find no one to share his suspicion. It was too absurd. In the first place, had Manning done the deed, he never would have hung around the scene of the crime as he did, for nearly an hour. I remembered perfectly his demeanor and expression, as I saw him, with Olive Raynor that afternoon. He was deeply concerned, greatly shocked, and most considerate and thoughtful of Olive, but there was no shadow of guilt on his fine, strong face.

I had looked at him closely both during the excitement of the tragedy itself, and later, as we were in the street-car, and I noted his grave, serious countenance, but though he seemed puzzled and anxious, there was no mark of Cain on his brow.

I told Wise this, and he listened, duly impressed, but, as he finally owned up, he saw no other way to look.

“It wasn’t Rodman,” he asserted; “that chap is a traitor and a spy, but he’s no murderer. And, too, he was in cahoots with Gately, and the last thing he wanted was to lose his patron. It wasn’t Sadie, of course; she too, wanted Gately alive, not dead. I know the unwillingness of Olive’s guardian to listen to Manning’s suit, seems a slight motive—yet where can we find a suspect with a stronger one?”

“We haven’t as yet,” I returned, “but there must be people implicated in that spy business—if that’s a true bill against Gately—”

“Oh, it’s a true bill, all right. Amos Gately was a wolf in sheep’s clothing! Miss Raynor will have to know it sooner or later. She really knows it now, but she won’t let herself believe it.”

“What about that paper Zizi took from Sadie Kent?”

“That’s what I’m working on. Meet me this afternoon at the Raynor house, and I may be able to tell you.”

The big, cheerful library at Olive’s house had come to be our general meeting-place of an afternoon. I usually dropped in there about four o’clock, and was pretty sure to find Wise or Rivers or both there. Zizi was a whole vaudeville show herself, and Olive was always cordial and hospitable. Mrs. Vail, too, was a gentle old lady, and I had grown to like her.

So I went, as Wise suggested, and found him poring over the mysterious paper.

Looking at it for the first time, I saw merely a lot of letters, pen-written, and arranged in long rows that ran clear across the sheet.

There were perhaps twenty rows or so, and each row held about thirty letters. They were carefully aligned and evenly spaced, and, without doubt, contained a hidden message.

“I’ve unraveled a lot of cryptograms in my time,” said Wise, “but this isn’t a cryptogram. I mean it isn’t in cipher code—there’s some other way of getting at it.”

We all studied it. Olive, Zizi, Wise, and I bent our heads over the table where it lay, while Mrs. Vail looked on from a little distance, and babbled about some man she knew once, who could solve secret writings.

Suddenly Zizi jumped up, and running around the table, viewed the paper from the other side.

She cocked her funny little head sidewise, and then wagged it knowingly as she took a few steps further and looked at the paper from another angle. All round the table she went, and finally, with a murmur of apology, took up the paper and held it laterally in front of her eager eyes.

“Whee!” she crowed in an ecstasy of satisfaction; “I’ve got it! You have to have a pattern to read it by.”

“A pattern!” I repeated, blankly.

“Yep! A paper with holes in it—a key-paper.”

“Oh!” and Wise looked as if a light had burst upon him. “That’s it, Ziz! You’re the wonder-child, after all! Stoo-pid! Stoo-pid!” and he beat his forehead in self-abasement. “And, oh! I say, Brice, what did you tell me once about Swiss cheese?”

“Swiss cheese?”

“Yes; don’t you remember? A carriage-call check—with holes in it.”

“Oh, that thing. Yes; it was on Mr. Gately’s desk—Hudson, the foxy detective, took it.”

“Can we get it?”

“Of course, by sending for it.”

“I’ll go!” cried Zizi; “where? Headquarters?” and she was already flinging on her coat.

“Let her go,” said Wise, giving the girl a quick, appreciative glance. “She’ll beat any other messenger, and she’ll find it.”

We heard Zizi’s imperative little voice demanding a cab from the telephone, and a bit later heard the street door close behind her.

“You see,” and Wise explained it to us, “Zizi noticed—and then I did—these letters. At first glance they seem to be perfectly regular, but noted closely there are some, here and there, that are a microscopic fraction of space nearer or farther away from others. And that shows what kind of a cipher it is. We may be mistaken about the carriage check, but I truly believe when we get it we can read the message this paper carries. We certainly can’t without it.”

This was so true that we laid the paper aside until the return of our winged Mercury.

She came soon, and waved triumphantly the perforated card she had gone in quest of.

“Here you are!” she cried; “let me try it as a reward for getting it.”

“All right, go to it,” said Wise, and flinging off her cape, Zizi bent over the puzzle.

“It’s it! It’s it!” she cried, exultantly. “See, oh, Wise One!”

The detective took the paper and the card.

“You see,” he said, generously sharing the first sight of the solution with us, “this card has seven holes, at irregular distances. By placing it in the right position on this solid bank of letters, certain ones show through the holes, and these—I hope—will spell the message.”

And it did. After re-adjusting the key card several times, Wise finally got it right, and the letters that could be seen through the holes in this card, as he moved it along, spelled coherent words and sentences. Of course, the other letters were not to be used.

He read the message aloud, and as we suspected, it was information concerning the shipment of munitions, and told of certain sailing dates.

“Spy work of the cleverest type,” Wise exclaimed; “you see, ‘The Link’ got her information from stolen telegrams, and recorded it in this way, so it would be unintelligible to anyone not having this card—or a duplicate of it.”

I scrutinized with interest the letters as they showed clearly through the little round holes.

“The information is of no particular value now,” Wise said; “it refers to yesterday as the sailing date. The point is, that this card—this key card, was found on—”

He paused: a glance at Olive’s agonized face stopped the words he would have uttered. But we all knew. That card, found on Amos Gately’s desk, or in his desk drawer, proved that he was implicated in the interception of these messages, that he was guilty of treason to his country!

Wise tried to help matters by saying, hastily, “Perhaps it was a plant! Perhaps this card was put where it was found by some sly scoundrel for the purpose of misleading—”

“Don’t!” said Olive, faintly; “you are kind, Mr. Wise, but you are saying that merely to give me a ray of comfort and hope. You know better. You believe—and I fear I must believe—my guardian was involved in some wrong, some grave wrong—and—”

She broke down utterly and sobbed in Zizi’s arms which were opened to receive her.

Feeling that our further stay was an intrusion, Rivers and I took leave, and Wise came along with us. We three went down to my rooms, and continued our confab without the embarrassment of Olive’s presence.

“It’s clearing itself up pretty quickly in some respects,” Wise said as he settled himself with a cigar, and passed the box to Rivers. “I’m not so surprised as some at Gately’s perfidy. It seems the Government has been onto him for some time—at least, they suspected him, and were secretly investigating his private affairs. That Sadie person—”

“By the way, Wise,” I interrupted him, “you sized her up perfectly! Did you ever hear about that, Rivers? Mr. Wise saw only the girl’s hatpin, and from it he drew an exact portrait of ‘The Link’ herself. How did you do it, Wise? Tell us the details.”

“Like all those deductions it was simpler than it sounded,” the detective said, smiling. “You see, Mr. Rivers, the head of the pin was a big good-looking scarab. I don’t know yet whether it was a real one, but if not it was a first-class imitation. This argued a person of education and taste. The average young woman doesn’t lean toward scarabs. Then, there was a short bit of a human hair caught in the setting. This was black, rather coarse, and strong, denoting a healthy, buxom brunette. Hair is a clear indication of physical appearance, as a rule. That’s how I know you aren’t Amory Manning,” he broke off suddenly and looked at Case Rivers. “I’ve had his description from Miss Raynor and from Brice, here, and they agree that Manning had dark, heavy hair, rather—footballish type. Yours is light, fine, and a little scant. And you have all the characteristics that belong to it. Oh, yes, I admit I’ve been trying to fasten Manning’s identity on you, but without success.”

“Don’t apologize,” laughed Rivers, “I’ve been trying to connect up with the missing Manning myself, but I can’t work it. So, I’m out for the reward for finding that elusive individual. But I fear he’s gone beyond recall.”

“By the way,” Wise put in, “I’ve found out who offers the reward. And, if you please, it’s none other than the United States Government!”

“Why?” Rivers asked, interestedly.

“Well, it seems Manning is—or was—a Secret Service man and he was set on the trail of Amos Gately. He worked secretly, of course, and—”

“And he was kidnaped by Gately’s friends!” I cried; “by some of Rodman’s underlings, and put out of the way! I don’t believe Manning is alive!”

“Go on about the hatpin, Mr. Wise, won’t you?” urged Rivers. “I think I’m going to grow up to be a detective and I’m taking notes.”

“Well,” said Wise, good-humoredly, “as I remember it, I mentioned the lady’s good teeth. This, because the prints on the rather soft gold of the pin were straight and even.”

“You said she was proud of them,” I put in.

“A glittering generality,” and Wise laughed. “Aren’t all girls proud of good teeth? Also, I assumed she had rather flashy tastes, for the scarab, large, and of a bright greenish-blue color, was not a quiet affair. A strong perfume clung to it, which also indicated a certain lack of refinement.”

“And you said untidy habits,” I reminded him.

“Because the pin was bent to a real crookedness. Also, it had been broken and mended. The break proving probable carelessness, and the mending seemed to me to show that she was sentimentally fond of it, for it was skilfully mended and the cost of that would have bought a new one, I should judge. I assumed her to be somewhat intellectual to care so much for a scarab, and I deduced her fairly well off to own and to care for the rather valuable trinket. None of these deductions amounted to much by itself, but the combination helped us to find a way to look for the owner. Of course, the cigarette stubs and the powder-paper helped, too. In fact, Miss Kent left pretty strong evidences of her call on Mr. Gately. But—she didn’t kill him. Now, who did? We are learning lots of things, but not one shred of evidence have we yet found against any individual as the actual murderer.”

“No,” I agreed. “You see, the shadow of the head that I saw on the glass door couldn’t have been Rodman’s.”

“And so it may have been anybody’s. I mean, it shows that heads look pretty much alike, when merely shadowed on a thick, waved glass.”

“Yes,” I mused, “it may have been anybody’s. But whose? It seems as if we ought to have a suspect by this time.”

“I’ll get you a suspect,” spoke up Case Rivers. “I’m going into this thing for all I’m worth. The way lies through the Rodman crowd. ‘The Link’ sold her information to Rodman and he took it to Gately, but of late, ‘The Link’ became more bold and went straight to Gately herself. Now, there must be others concerned, and an interview with Miss Kent would give us an inkling of who they are. She’s lost some of her bravado, by this time, I’ve no doubt, and I’m going to chase her up. Then, too, I want to go to Mr. Gately’s office. I’ve never been there yet! Don’t think, Wise, that I’m butting in on your game, but sometimes two heads are better than one, if one is a nameless wanderer on the face of the earth.”

“All right, Rivers,” and Wise nodded genially, “go in and win. We’re together on this matter. And when it’s over, I’m going to take up your case, and see just how, when, and where you fell through the earth.”

“I wish you would,” and Rivers looked earnestly at the detective, “for I see that trip every night in my dreams. I see myself falling through—oh, I won’t bore you with that same old story!”

“It doesn’t bore me, but just now we’ll put all our energies on the present puzzle. We must get Gately’s murderer, and then we must get Amory Manning.”

“Zizi says—” I began.

“I know she does,” returned Wise, looking thoughtful. “Zizi says Manning is the murderer. But the kid has no reason to say it but a hunch. She’s a witch though for hunches, and I keep her idea in mind.”

“No,” and Rivers spoke positively, “it doesn’t seem to me that Manning is the murderer. If he was in the Secret Service, he may be purposely in hiding now, for some reason entirely unconnected with Amos Gately’s murder.”

“Very likely,” assented Wise. “Only, as I say, I often remember Zizi’s notions because they so often pan out correct.”

“She’s a marvel, that child,” said Rivers; “where’d you get her?”

“She’s my model. In civilian life, I’m by way of being an artist, you know. I sketch her over and over, but never have I successfully caught her smile. She’s a witch child, a sprite.”

“Yes; she seems gypsy born. But clever! And of a charm.”

“All that,” agreed Wise. “And a good little thing. Devoted to me, like a faithful dog, and yet, absolutely impersonal. Oh, I couldn’t get along at all without Ziz.”

And almost as he spoke the door opened and Zizi came gliding in. Her mode of entering a room was one of her individual characteristics. She slid in softly and unobtrusively, yet one was at once aware of her. It seemed to electrify the atmosphere, and the place was brighter and more vital in feeling. She moved across the room as quietly as a shadow, she said no word, yet her whole presence spoke.

“Hello, Ziz,” and Wise smiled at her. “Watcha want?”

“Mr. Rivers,” she replied, flashing her black eyes at him. “Miss Olive sent me. And she wants the other crystal.”

“A new mystery?” and Wise laughed. “I can’t see through the other crystal! Has it to do with a pair of glasses?”

“No,” and Rivers took out a pocket-book, from which he extracted some flimsy paper. These proved to be tracings of snow crystals similar to those I had seen him drawing while he was still in the hospital.

“How lovely!” Zizi exclaimed, as she took the traced patterns. “You see,” and she showed them to Wise, “Miss Olive is making lace work—and Mr. Rivers makes her these patterns. Aren’t they exquisite?”

They were. They were forms of snow crystals, than which there is nothing more beautiful, and Rivers had adapted and combined them into a delicate lace-like pattern, which Olive was to copy with linen threads, or whatever women use to make lace out of.

“I was going to take them round,” Rivers said; “I hope the delay hasn’t bothered Miss Raynor.”

“Oh, no,” Zizi assured him, “but she is impatient to see this new design and couldn’t wait. So I offered to run down for it. I knew you were here.”

“But I’m just going up to Miss Raynor’s,” Rivers spoke as if disappointed, “and the patterns are my only excuse for a call! So, if you please, Miss Zizi, I’ll take them to the impatient lady, and I’ll go at once.”

“I think she’s gone out, Mr. Rivers, she was about to go as I left. If you telephone you’ll likely catch her.”

Quite unembarrassed at our knowing smiles, Rivers took up my desk-telephone and called Olive’s number. While waiting for the response he picked up a pencil from my pen-tray, and idly drew a snow crystal on the big desk-blotter.

I watched him, for his skill fascinated me. He drew the dainty six-sided figure with the accuracy of a designer. The tiny fronds, all six alike, made a lovely hexagonal form as it grew beneath his fingers.

He was apparently unconscious of what he was doing, and drew without thinking, for he spoke to us several times while waiting for the desired connection.

At last Olive answered him, and he dropped the pencil and talked to her. In a wheedlesome mood, he persuaded her to defer her proposed errand until he could join her and he would accompany her. The kindly familiarity with which he carried on the conversation and the jaunty assurance he showed that she would accede to his request proved to us, listeners perforce, that there was good comradeship between them.

Rivers hung up the receiver, and turned to me with a boyish smile. “I’m going now,” he said, “Miss Raynor is waiting for me. I’ll see you again, tonight, Brice.” And with a general nod of farewell he went off.

Zizi sat staring at my desk.

The strange child was thinking of something—more, she had made a discovery, or had sensed some new information.

She leaned over the desk, her outstretched hands resting on the big blotter and her black eyes wide with an expression of surprised fear.

“Look!” she cried; “look!”

But her slender finger pointed only to the snow crystal that Rivers had drawn. It was a graceful figure, not quite finished, but a delicate tracery of one of the myriad forms that snow crystals show. How often I had looked at the lovely things as they rested for a moment on my dark coat sleeve when I was out in a snowstorm. And after seeing Rivers draw them so skilfully, several times, they had taken on a new interest to me. But what had so moved Zizi I could not imagine. It was as if the little drawing were fraught with some dreadful significance of which I knew nothing.

Nor was Pennington Wise any more aware than I of the girl’s meaning.

He smiled quizzically, and said, “Well, Zizi, girl, what’s hypnotizing you? That drawing of Rivers’?”

“Yes,” and Zizi turned her big black eyes from my face to Wise’s, and gave a queer little sigh.

“Out with it, girlie,” urged Wise. “Tell your old Penny Wise what’s the matter.”

“Will you do what I want?” she asked, her voice tense and thrilled with strong feeling.

“Yes; to the limit.”

“Then look at that thing! That snow crystal!”

“Yes, I’ve looked,” and after a moment’s close scrutiny Wise turned his eyes again to the eerie face, so vividly emotional, so white with that unnamed fear.

“You look, too, Mr. Brice,” and I did.

“Note the design,” Zizi went on, “see just how the fronds are marked. Isn’t it funny how people always draw or scribble while they’re waiting to get a telephone call?”

“Oh, come now, Ziz,” and Penny Wise patted her arm, “you’re putting up a game on us. We know Rivers draws these things beautifully. Why act as if you never knew it before?”

“Come with me,” and Zizi rose and began to put her long black cloak round her, shivering with excitement as she did so. “You come, too, Mr. Brice.”

We obeyed the strange child, for I remembered how Pennington Wise respected what he called her “hunches,” and before going downstairs she directed that I call a taxicab.

In the cab she said nothing, having already bade us go to Amos Gately’s office, and arrange to get into the rooms.

And then, when we were there, when I had obtained the keys from the bank people and had entered the dim, quiet rooms, Zizi went straight to the middle room, straight to Amos Gately’s desk, and lifting the telephone from where it stood on the big desk-blotter, she disclosed the exact counterpart of the snow crystal we had seen drawn at my desk by Case Rivers!

CHAPTER XVI

The Snowflake

I looked at the design with interest, but without at first grasping its true significance.

Pennington Wise looked at it aghast. “Where did it come from?” he exclaimed.

“It’s always been there,” said Zizi. “I mean, I saw it there one day when I was in this room with Mr. Hudson, I—I—”

“Didn’t know you’d ever been here, Ziz,” and Wise smiled at the earnest little face.

“Yep, I was; and I happened to move the telephone, and under it was that drawing. I didn’t think anything about it, as evidence, but I looked at it ’cause it was so pretty. And I put the telephone back over it again.”

“But I searched this room,” and Wise looked mystified.

“You probably didn’t lift the telephone, then,” Zizi returned, shaking her elfin head, while a deep sorrow showed in her black eyes.

“I don’t believe I did,” Wise mused, thinking back. “I did pick up most of the desk fittings to examine them but I suppose I didn’t take hold of the telephone at all.”

“’Course not!” Zizi was always ready to defend Wise’s actions. “How could you know there was a picture under it? But, oh, Penny, what does it mean?”

“Wait—let’s get at it carefully. On the face of it, it would seem as if Case Rivers must have drawn this figure of a snow crystal. Everybody has some peculiar habit, and especially, lots of people have a habit of drawing some particular thing when waiting at a telephone.

“I’ve asked half a dozen men of late, and every one says he scribbles words or draws some crude combination of lines. But each one says he always does the same thing, whatever it may be. Now, I imagine, very few men draw snow crystals—and fewer still, draw them with this degree of perfection. Again, granting they did, would any other individual draw this identical design, with this accuracy of drawing, that Case Rivers drew on the desk-blotter at your house, Brice?”

“I should say it would be impossible that anyone else could have done it,” I replied, honestly, though I began to see where our investigation was leading us.

“It is impossible,” declared Wise. “Two men might draw snow crystals, but they would not both choose this particular one.”

“It’s exactly the same,” Zizi murmured, “for I brought Mr. Brice’s with me: here it is.”

Calmly the girl took from her little hand-bag a piece torn from my desk-blotter. It held the drawing done by Rivers while he was waiting for his telephone call and it was the precise duplicate of the figure drawn on the blotter of Amos Gately’s mahogany desk.

“The same pencil—or, rather, the same hand drew those two,” Wise said, positively, and I could not contradict this.

Snow crystals are said by scientists to show hundreds of different shapes, and almost any illustrated dictionary or text-book of natural science shows several specimens. This one we were looking at was of simple but beautiful design and I felt sure Rivers had copied it from some picture as one can rarely keep a real snowflake long enough to copy its form.

Anyway it was stretching the law of coincidence a little too far to believe that two men would idly draw the same form on a desk-blotter while telephoning.

Of course, this sketch on Amos Gately’s desk need not have been made while the artist’s other hand held the telephone receiver, but its juxtaposition to the instrument indicated that it was.

“Of course, Mr. Rivers drew this,” Zizi declared, her little head bobbing as she turned her black eyes from one of us to the other.

She wore a small turban made entirely of red feathers—soft breast feathers of some tropical bird, I suppose. The hat set jauntily on her sleek black hair, and the motions of her head were so quick and birdlike, that she gave me a fleeting remembrance of the human birds I saw in the play of Chantecler.

“Of course he did,” assented Wise, very gravely; “and now we must go on. Granting, for the moment, that Case Rivers—as we call him—drew this little sketch, he must have been in this office the day of Amos Gately’s murder. For I’ve been told that the blotter on this desk was changed every day, and any marks or blots now on it were therefore made on that day. If he did it, then—or, rather, when he did it, he was telephoning to somebody—”

“Well,” put in Zizi, “perhaps he was just sitting here, talking to Mr. Gately. Maybe, he might draw those things when he just sits idly as well as when he telephones.”

“Yes; you’re right. Well, at any rate, he must have been sitting here, opposite Mr. Gately, on that very day. And I opine he was telephoning, but that makes no difference. Now, if he was here, in this office, on that day—what was he here for, and who is he?”

“He is the murderer,” said Zizi, but she spoke as if she were a machine. The words seemed to come from her lips without her own volition; her voice was wooden, mechanical, and her eyes had a far-away, vacant gaze. “I don’t know who he is, but he is the man who shot Mr. Gately.”

“Oh, come, now, Ziz,” Wise shook her gently, “wake up! Don’t jump at conclusions. He may be the most innocent man in New York. He may have been in here calling on Gately early in the day, and his errand may have been of the most casual sort. He may have had cause to telephone, and as he sat waiting for his call, he sketched the snowflake pattern, which is his habit when waiting. But that he was here that day is a positive fact—to my mind. Now, it’s for us to find out what he was here for, and who he is. I don’t favor going to him and asking him pointblank. That peculiar phase of amnesia from which he is suffering is a precarious matter to deal with. A sudden shock might bring back his memory—or, it might—”

“Addle his brain!” completed Zizi. “All right, oh, Most Wise Guy! But when you do find out the truth, it will be that Case Rivers in his right mind and in his own proper person killed Mr. Gately.”

“Hush up, Ziz! If you have such a fearful hunch keep it to yourself. I’m not going to believe that, unless I have to! It has always been my conviction that Rivers is—or was, a worthwhile man. I feel sure he was of importance in some line—some big line. Moreover, I believe his yarn about falling through the earth.”

“You do!” I cried, in amazement. “You stand for that! You believe he fell into the globe at Canada—or some Northern country, and fell out again in New York City?”

“Not quite that,” and Wise smiled. “But I believe he had some mighty strange experience, of which his tale is a pretty fair description, if not entirely the literal truth.”

“Such as?”

“Why, suppose he fell down a mine shaft in Canada. Suppose that knocked out his memory. Then suppose he was rescued and sent to New York for treatment, say, at some private hospital or sanitarium. Then suppose he escaped, and, still loony, threw himself into the East River—oh, I don’t know—only, there are lots of ways that he could have that notion about his fall through the earth, and have something real to base it on.”

“Gammon and spinach!” I remarked, my patience exhausted; “the man had a blow or a fall or something that jarred his memory, but his ‘falling through the earth’ idea is a hallucination, pure and simple. However, that doesn’t matter. Now we must follow this new trail, and see if we can get a line on his personality. He can’t tell us what he was here for—if he doesn’t remember that he was here.”

“Perhaps he does remember,” Wise spoke musingly.

“Nixy!” and Zizi’s saucy head nodded positively; “Mr. Rivers is sincere now, whatever he was before. He doesn’t remember shooting Mr. Gately—”

“Stop that, Zizi!” Wise spoke more sharply than I had ever heard him. “I forbid you to assume that Rivers is the murderer—you are absurd!”

“But I’ve got a hunch—” Zizi’s black eyes stared fixedly at Wise, “and—”

“Keep your hunch to yourself! I told you that before! Now, hush up.”

Not at all abashed, Zizi made a most wicked little moue at him, but she said no more just then.

“We have a new direction in which to look, though,” Wise went on, “and we must get about it. You remember, we found a hatpin here that led us to Sadie, ‘The Link,’ as straight as a signboard could have done.”

“Yes,” scoffed Zizi, “with the help of Norah and her powder-paper, and Jenny and her tattle-tongue!”

“All right,” Wise was unperturbed; “we got her all the same. Now, perhaps the Man Who Fell Through the Earth also left some indicative clues. Let’s look round.”

“He couldn’t leave anything more indicative than the drawing on the blotter,” persisted Zizi. “He drew on Mr. Brice’s blotter today and he drew on this blotter of Mr. Gately’s the day Mr. Gately was killed. That much is certain.”

“So it is, Zizi,” agreed Wise; “but nothing further is certain as yet. But we may find something more.”

As he talked the detective rummaged in the desk drawers. He pulled out the packet of papers that had interested him before.

“I’d like to read these,” he said; “you see, they’re dated in chronological order, and they must mean something.”

“It’s where they come from,” said Zizi, with an air of wisdom; “you see, Waldorf means a certain message in their code book, and St. Regis means another; Biltmore paper means another, and so on.”

“Right you are, as usual,” Wise said, so approvingly that Zizi smiled all over her queer little countenance.

“Part of ‘The Link’s’ spy business,” she went on, and I cried out in denial.

“Oh, come off, Mr. Brice,” she said, “you may as well admit, first as last, that you know Mr. Gately was mixed up in this spy racket. I don’t know yet just how deeply or how knowingly—”

“You mean,” I caught at the straw, “that he was a go-between, but didn’t know it?”

“I thought that at first,” said Wise, “I hoped it was so. That, of course, would argue that he was infatuated with Sadie and she wound him round her finger and used him to further her schemes, while he himself was innocent. But the theory, though a pretty one, won’t work. Gately wasn’t quite gullible enough for that, and, too, he is more deeply concerned in it all than we know.”

“Yes,” I agreed; “these letters—I mean, these blank sheets—were sent to him by mail. One came the day after he died.”

“I know it. And, as Zizi says, they mean something definite in accordance with a prepared code. For instance, a sheet of Hotel Gotham paper, dated December tenth, might mean that a certain transport, indicated in the code book by that hotel, was to sail on that date.”

“That’s a simple, child’s-play explanation,” said Zizi—“but it may be the right one.”

“Certainly,” Wise assented, “there may be other explanations and more complicated ones. But it doesn’t matter now. The receipt of these letters—blank letters—was of secret value to Gately, and proves him to have been pretty deeply mixed up in it all.”

“But what about Mr. Rivers?” spoke up Zizi; “where does he come in?”

“It looks black,” Wise declared. “He was here that day secretly. That is, he didn’t come in at Jenny’s door. She doesn’t recognize him, I asked her. Therefore, he came in by one of these other doors, or up in the secret elevator. In either case, he didn’t want his visit known. So he is a wrongdoer, with Gately, and—probably, with Rodman. They’re all tarred with the same brush. The trail of the spy serpent is over them all.”

“No!” cried Zizi, and her face was stormy, “my nice Mr. Rivers isn’t any spy! He hasn’t anything to do with that spy matter!”

“Why!” I exclaimed; “you said he was the murderer!”

“Well, I’d rather be a murderer than a spy!” Her eyes snapped and her whole thin little body quivered with indignation. “A murder is a decent crime compared to spy work! Oh, my nice Mr. Rivers!”

She broke down and cried convulsively.

“Let her alone,” said Wise, not unkindly, after a brief glance at the shaking little figure. “She’s always better for a crying spell. It clears her atmosphere. Now, Brice, let’s get busy. As Zizi says, you must admit that there’s no doubt that Amos Gately was pretty deeply into the game. Even if he was unduly friendly with Sadie Kent, it was indubitably through and because of their dealings together in the stolen telegram business. The way I see it is that Sadie sold her intercepted messages to the highest bidder. This was George Rodman, but above him was Amos Gately. Oh, don’t look so incredulous. It isn’t the first time a bank president has gone wrong on the side. Gately never was unfaithful to his office, he never misappropriated funds or anything of that sort, but for some reason or other, whether money gain, or hope of other reward, he did betray his country.”

I couldn’t deny it—or, rather, I could deny it, but only because of my still unshattered faith in Amos Gately. I could bring no proof of my denial.

“But,” I said, musingly, “we haven’t yet proved Gately mixed up in—”

“What!” cried Wise; “isn’t this enough proof? These blank letters, for that’s what they are—the proved visit here of Sadie, ‘The Link,’ and the fact that Gately was shot—by someone—with no known reason—all that goes to show that the murderer had some secret motive, some unknown cause for getting Gately out of the way.”

“I see it, as you put it,” I said, “but I will not believe Amos Gately a spy—or conniving at spy business until I have to. I shall continue to believe he was a tool—an innocent tool—of the Rodman and Sadie Kent combination.”

“All right, Brice, keep your faith as long as you can, but, I tell you, you’ll soon have to admit that I’m right. Gately, as we all know, was a peculiar man. He had few friends, he had little or no social life, and he did have secret callers and a secret mode of entrance and exit from his offices. All this shows something to hide—it is unexplainable for a man who has nothing to conceal.”

“All right, Wise,” I said, finally, “I suppose you are right. But still we must continue our search for the murderer. We don’t seem to progress much in that matter.”

“Not yet, but soon,” Wise said, optimistically; “the ax is laid at the root of the tree—we are on the right track—”

“Meaning Case Rivers?” I cried, in alarm.

“Meaning Case Rivers—perhaps,” he returned. “I’m not as sure as Zizi is that the evidence points to him as the murderer, but we must conclude that he was in this room the day of the murder—and what else could he have been here for?”

“What else?” I stormed. “Dozens of things! Hundreds of things! Why, man alive, every person who set foot in this room on that day didn’t necessarily kill Amos Gately!”

“Every person who set foot in this room on that day is his potential murderer,” Wise returned, calmly. “Every person must be suspected—or, at least, investigated.”

“Well,” I said, after realizing that he spoke truly, “you investigate the question of Rivers’ visit here that day. I don’t want to do that. But I’m going down to Headquarters now, and perhaps I’ll dig up something of importance.”

And I did. A visit to the Chief told me the interesting tale of the further discoveries of Sadie Kent’s industries. It seems the Federal agents had found a complete and powerful wireless station in a cottage at Southeast Beach, a fairly popular summer resort. The cottage was seemingly untenanted, but some unexplained wires which ran along the rafters of an adjoining house led to the discovery of the auxiliary wireless station.

Experts had broken into the locked house and had found a cleverly concealed keyboard of a wireless apparatus. Further search had disclosed the whole thing, and, moreover, had brought out the fact, that the adjoining cottage was occupied by two apparently innocent old people, who were really in the employ of Sadie Kent.

“The Link” was a person of importance, and though she passed for a mere telegraph operator, she was one of the most important links in the German spy system in the United States.

In the room where the wireless apparatus was found there were also quantities of letter paper from the various hotels of New York City.

These sheets, abstracted from the writing-rooms of the hotels, were the code system used in forwarding the stolen intelligence.

It all hung together, and the bunch of those hotel papers found in Gately’s desk, and especially the fact that one reached his address the day after his demise proved, beyond all doubt, his implication in the despicable business.

Now, I thought, to what extent or in what way was Case Rivers concerned? Surely the man had been in Gately’s office on that fatal day. I had no idea that he had killed the banker—that was only Zizi’s foolishness—but he had certainly been there.

It came to me suddenly that if Rivers could be taken again to the Gately offices, the rooms, the associations, might possibly bring back his lost memory, and let him reinstate himself in his real personality. To be sure, this might prove him the murderer, but if so, it would be only the course of justice; and, on the other hand, if it explained his innocent or casual call on Gately that, too, was what the man deserved.

And so I went at once to see Rivers. I found him in his rooms, the ones he had taken while he was to assist Wise in his work, and he greeted me cordially.

“The plot thickens,” he said as I told him of Sadie’s wireless station. “I knew that girl was a sly one. She’s one of the most important people in the big spy web. She’s one of their spyders, who spin a pretty web and attract gullible flies. Amos Gately fell for her charms—you know, Brice, she is a siren—and somehow she lured him into the web she so deftly spun. To my mind, Gately was a good, upright citizen, who fell for a woman’s wiles. I’m not sure about this, it may be he was mixed up in spy work before Sadie came on the scene—but I’m certain she was accessory before, during, or after the fact.”

“Accessory to his murder?” I asked.

“Not necessarily; but strongly accessory to his wrongdoing in the matter of treason. I think she, for a time, worked Gately through Rodman, but, latterly, she grew bolder or found she could do more by personal visits and she came and went by the secret elevator, pretty much as she chose.”

“I hate to have Miss Raynor know this,” I said with a covert glance at Rivers, to see how he took the remark.

“So do I,” he said, as frankly as a boy; “I may as well tell you, Brice, that I love that girl. She is, to me, the very crown of womanhood. I have worshiped her from the first moment I saw her. But, understand, I have no hopes—no aspirations. I shall never offer my hand and heart to any woman while I have no name to offer. And I shall never have a name. If I haven’t yet discovered my own identity I never can. No, I’m no pessimist, and I know that some time some sudden shock might restore my memory all in a minute, yet I can’t bank on such a possibility. I’ve talked this over with Rankin—he’s the doctor who’s following up my case—time and again. He says that a sudden and very forcible shock is needed to restore my memory, and that it may come and—it may not. He says it can’t be forced or brought about knowingly—it will have to be a coincidence—a happening that will jar the inert cells of my brain—or, something like that—I don’t remember the scientific terms.”

Rivers passed his hand wearily across his forehead.

I was in a quandary. I had gone to see the man with full purpose of luring him to Gately’s office and confronting him with the sketched snowflake on the blotting-pad. Now, since he had confided to me his love for Olive Raynor, I shrank from doing anything that might prove him to be Amos Gately’s murderer. For I was fond of Miss Raynor, in a deeply respectful and unpresumptuous fashion. And I had noticed several things of late that made me feel pretty sure that her friendship for Rivers was true and deep, if indeed it were not something more than friendship. This, to be sure, would argue but a fickle loyalty to the memory of Amory Manning, but as Norah and I agreed, when talking it over, Miss Raynor had never shown any desperate grief at Manning’s disappearance—at least, not more than the loss of a casual friend might arouse.

But I knew where my duty lay. And so I said, “Rivers, I wish you’d go round to Mr. Gately’s office with me. Don’t you think that if you were there—and you never have been—you might chance upon some clue that has escaped the notice of Wise or Hudson or myself?”

“Righto!” he said; “I’ve thought myself I’d like to go there. Not, as you politely suggest, to find overlooked clues, but just as a matter of general interest. I’m out, you know, to find the murderer, and also to trace the vanished Amory Manning.”

CHAPTER XVII

Zizi’s Hunch

“He’s afraid,” and Norah wagged her head sagaciously, while her gray eyes had an apprehensive expression.

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of the truth. You see, Mr. Brice, our friend Rivers is nobody’s fool. He’s onto most points regarding this case, and now, he’s getting onto himself. That astute little scrap of humanity, Zizi, knows he is. Of course, living with Miss Raynor, as she does, she has opportunities every day to see Mr. Rivers, for he’s eternally hanging around the Raynor house. Oh, I don’t mean he’s an idler; not by a long shot. On the contrary, his middle name is efficiency! He puts over a lot of work in a day.”

“What sort of work and how do you know so much about him?”

We were in my office, waiting for Rivers, who had promised to come to see me, and to look into the Gately rooms. It was now nearly half an hour after the time he had set for his call, and as it was not his habit to be tardy, I was surprised. I had begun to look upon Rivers as a man of importance, not only in the matters with which we were associated, but he showed so much general ability and force of character that I wondered who or what he would turn out to be. For I felt sure he would find himself, and even if he never discovered who he had been he would make a new name and a well worthwhile individuality for himself yet.

Norah, too, admired him, and seemed to know as much of his capabilities, or more, than I did myself.

“I don’t know just what sort of work, but I think it’s connected with the mysteries we’re up against ourselves. And I know about him, because Zizi told me. She sees everything he does—when she’s with him, I mean. Not a gesture or motion escapes her notice. And she’s watching his attitude toward Miss Raynor. She says—Zizi does—that Mr. Rivers is over head and ears in love with Olive, but he won’t tell her so because he is, as he puts it, a self-named man! Zizi heard him call himself that when talking to Miss Raynor, and then he just looked away, and resolutely changed the subject. But she thinks—Zizi does—that he’s working night and day to find out who he is, and she’s sure he’ll find out. And also, he’s working to find Mr. Gately’s murderer, and he’s hunting for Amory Manning. No wonder the man’s busy!”

“Well, why is he afraid to come here?”

“I’m not sure that he is; but you know Zizi has a hunch that he’s the murderer, and I think maybe he is. That snowflake sketch proves he was there that day and as his presence isn’t accounted for, why may he not have been the slayer? And, why may he not have an inkling or a suspicion of it, and dread to verify his fears?”

“But, good gracious, Norah, even granting he was in Gately’s office that day, he needn’t have done the shooting. There are about one million other errands he could have been there on. Perhaps he was a commercial traveler, selling laces, and drew the design for a sample.”

“Sometimes, Mr. Brice, you talk like a Tom-noddy! Drummer, indeed! I can tell you whatever calling Case Rivers followed, it was far different from that of a selling agent! I’ll bet he was a lawyer, at least!”

“At least!” I mocked her; “understand, pray, I consider my profession somewhat above the least of the professions!”

“Yes, for you dignify it to a high standing,” and the gray eyes flashed me the smile of appreciation that I was looking for. I may as well admit that I was growing very fond of those two gray eyes and their owner, and I had a pretty strong conviction that after the present case was all settled I should turn my attention to the winning of the exclusive right to the tender glances those eyes could give.

But just now, I had to exclude all distracting thoughts, and forcing my mind back to the present situation, I again marveled at the non-appearance of Case Rivers.

“Perhaps he’s fallen through the earth again,” Norah suggested; “by the way, Mr. Brice, what do you think about that fall? Mr. Rivers is no doubt under some strange hallucination, but all the same, may there not be some foundation on which he based his dream?”

“Maybe! There must be! That mind of his is too sure-fire to hang on so desperately to a mere dream. He had some experience of a strange nature, and it included something that he looks upon as falling through the earth.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve a vague idea of a motor accident. Say, a motor car ran into a stone wall, and he was hurled high in the air, and landed in the East River—”

“But I don’t see how that implies falling through the earth.”

“Well, say he slid down a high bank to reach the river—”

“There’s no high bank near the morgue, and he was fished out in that locality.”

“But he needn’t have fallen in there! In fact, he couldn’t have—he must have floated or drifted a considerable distance to have had his clothing torn from him—and to have reached the state of exhaustion and freezing that so nearly culminated in death.”

“Yes, but even yet, you haven’t suggested anything like falling through the earth.”

“All right, Miss Smarty, what’s your idea? I see you’re dying to spring something.”

“Only what I’ve thought from the beginning. I believe he was in some cold country, Canada, or somewhere, and fell down through a mine shaft, or into a deep old well, or perhaps merely an excavation for a new, large building. But, anyway, whatever it was, his last impression was of falling down into the ground. Then when he struck he was knocked unconscious. Then, he was taken to a hospital, or somewhere, and as the fall had utterly blotted out his memory, he was kept in confinement. Then, somehow he broke loose and came to New York—or, maybe, he was brought to New York for treatment by the doctors and he got away and either threw himself into the river or fell in accidentally, and when he was rescued he still remembered the fall but nothing else concerning his disaster.”

“Good enough, Norah, as a theory. But seems to me, in that case, he would have been sought and found by the people who had him in charge.”

“Ah, that’s the point of it all! They don’t want to find him! They know just where he is, and all about him, but they won’t tell, for it suits their base purposes to have him lost!”

“Well, you have cooked up a scheme! And he killed Amos Gately?”

“Maybe, but if so, he did it unknowingly. Perhaps these people who are looking after him, secretly hypnotized him to do it—”

“Oh, Norah! come off! desist! let up! Next thing you know you’ll be having him in the movies! For you never thought up all that stuff without getting hints for it from some slapstick melodrama!”

“Oh, well, people who are absolutely without imagination can’t expect to see into a mystery! But, you won’t see any Mr. Rivers this morning—I can assure you of that!”

She turned to her typewriter, and I took up my telephone.

I could not get Rivers at his home address, and I next called up Miss Raynor.

She replied, in agitated tones, that Rivers had been to see her for a few minutes, and that he had left half an hour before. She begged me to come around at once.

Of course, I went.

I found her in a strange state of mind. She seemed like one who had made a discovery, and was fearful of inadvertently disclosing it.

But when I urged her to be frank, she insisted she had nothing to conceal.

“I don’t know anything, Mr. Brice, truly I don’t,” she repeated. “I mean, anything new or anything that I haven’t told you. Mr. Rivers was here this morning for a very short call. He said that while his memory had not returned, he had a queer mental impression of being on a search for a paper when he fell through the earth.”

“Did he go down into the earth to seek the paper?” I asked, thinking it best to treat the matter lightly.

“No,” she returned, in all seriousness, “but he believes he was commissioned to hunt out a valuable paper, of some sort, and while on the quest he fell through the earth, by accident. It was the shock of that that impaired his memory.”

“Sufficient cause!” I couldn’t help saying.

Olive bristled: “Oh, I know you don’t believe his story—almost nobody does—but I do.”

“So do I!” and Zizi was in the room. One could never say of that girl that she entered or came in—she just—was there—in that silent, mysterious way of hers. And then with equally invisible motions she was sitting opposite me, at Olive’s side, on a low ottoman.

“I know Mr. Rivers very well,” Zizi announced, as if she were his official sponsor, “and what he says is true, no matter how unbelievable it may sound. He says he fell through the earth, and so he did fall through the earth, and that’s all there is about that!”

“Good for you, Zizi!” I cried. “You’re a loyal little champion! And just how did he accomplish the feat?”

“It will be explained in due season,” and Zizi’s big black eyes took on a sibylline expression as she gazed straight at me. “If you were told, on good authority, that a man had crossed the ocean in an aeroplane, you’d believe it, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes; but that doesn’t seem to me a parallel case,” I demurred.

“Neither is Case Rivers a parallel case,” Zizi giggled, “but he’s the real thing in the way of Earth Fallers. And when you know all, you’ll know everything!”

The child was exasperating in her foolish retorts and yet so convincing was the determined shake of her little black head that I was almost tempted to believe in her statements.

“You’re a baby sphinx, Zizi,” and Olive looked at her affectionately, “but honestly, Mr. Brice, she keeps my spirits up, and she is so positive herself of what she says that she almost convinces me. As for Mrs. Vail, she swallows everything Zizi says for law and gospel!”

“And just what is it you say, now, Zizi?” I asked.

“Nothin’ much, kind sir. Only that Case Rivers is a gentleman and a scholar, that his memory is on the home stretch and humming along, and that if he’s after a paper—he’ll get it!”

“And, incidentally he’s Amos Gately’s—”

A scream of agony from Zizi interrupted my speech, and jumping to her feet she danced round the room, her forefinger thrust between her red lips, and her little, eerie face contorted as with pain.

“Oh, what is it, Zizi?” cried Olive, running to the frantic girl.

Mrs. Vail, hearing the turmoil, came running in, and she and Olive held Zizi between them, begging to know how she was hurt.

Catching an opportunity, Zizi looked at me, over Mrs. Vail’s shoulder, and the message shot from her eyes was fully as understandable as if she had spoken. It said, “Do not mention any hint of Case Rivers’ possible connection with the Gately murder, and do not mention the snowflake drawn on the blotter in Mr. Gately’s office.”

Yes, quite a lengthy and comprehensive speech to be made without words, but the speaking black eyes said it as clearly as lips could have done.

I nodded my obedience, and then Zizi giggled and with her inimitable impudence, she turned to Olive, and said: “I’m like the White Queen, in ‘Alice,’ I haven’t pricked my finger yet, but I probably shall, some day.”

“What were you screaming about, then?” asked Mrs. Vail, inclined to be angry, while Olive looked amused and mystified.

“Emergency,” and Zizi grinned at her. “First aid to the injured—or, rather, prevention, which is worth a pound of first aid!”

“You’re crazy!” said Mrs. Vail, a little annoyed at being fooled so. “I thought you were nearly killed!”

“When you knew a lady once who was nearly killed did she yell like that?” asked Zizi, with an innocent smile.

“Yes!” exclaimed Mrs. Vail; “but how did you know I once saw a lady nearly killed?”

“Mind-reading!” replied Zizi, and then Pennington Wise arrived, and we all shamelessly ignored Mrs. Vail and her yarns to listen to his report.

“There’s a lot doing,” he said, “and,” he added, gently, “I’m sorry to bring you unpleasant news, Miss Raynor, but you’ll have to know sooner or later—”

“I do know,” said Olive, bravely; “you’re going to tell me my guardian was—was not a good man.”

“That is so; it is useless to try to soften the truth. Amos Gately was the receiver of important Government secrets, learned by Sadie Kent, the telegrapher. She carried them to Rodman, who in turn transmitted them to Gately, who, it seems, had a way of getting the information to the enemy. Of course, the secret wireless station, recently discovered, was used, as well as other means of communication. I won’t go into details, Miss Raynor, but Amos Gately was the ‘man higher up,’ who thought himself safe from discovery because of his unimpeachable reputation for integrity, and also because of the infinite precautions he had taken. Indeed, if he had not fallen a victim to the personal charms of ‘The Link,’ his share in the wrong might never have been learned.”

Olive listened to all this, white-faced and still—her lips a tense, drawn line of scarlet—her expression a stony calm.

Zizi, watching her closely, and with loving care, slipped her little brown paw into Olive’s hand, and noted with satisfaction the faint answering smile.

“Perhaps,” Olive said, after a thoughtful pause, “it is as well, then, that Uncle Amos did not—did not live to be—disgraced.”

“It is,” said Wise, gravely; “he would have faced a Federal prison had it all been discovered while he lived. That will be Rodman’s fate—if he is not held for the crime of murder. But I think he will not be. For his alibi clears him and it was to escape the graver charge that he has told so much of the spy business.”

“And so,” I said, “we are as far as ever from the discovery of the murderer?”

“You never can tell,” Wise returned; “it may be we are on the very eve of solving the mystery. Rivers is on the warpath—”

“I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Wise,” Olive broke in, “that Mr. Rivers was here this morning, and he seems to have a slight glimmer of returning memory.”

“He has? Good! Then it will all come back to him. I’ve been looking up this aphasia-amnesia business, and quite often when the patient begins to recover his memory, it all comes back to him with a bang! Where is Rivers?”

“He went away—I don’t know where—” Olive’s lips quivered, and so plainly did she show her feelings that we all saw at once she feared that Rivers had fled, because of his returning memory.

“It’s all right,” declared Zizi, stanchly; “Mr. Rivers is white clear through! He’ll come back, soon, and he’ll bring the paper he’s after.”

“What paper?” demanded Wise.

“The poipers! the poipers!” scoffed Zizi; “did you ever know a case, oh, Wise Guy, that didn’t revolve round and hinge on a poiper? Well, the dockyments in the case is what he’s a-soichin’ for! See?”

When Zizi acted the gamine she was irresistibly funny and we all laughed, which was what she wanted to lighten the strain of the situation.

Rivers was a mystery, indeed. Every one of us, I think, felt that he might be connected with the Gately affair. All of us, that is, but Olive—and who could tell what she thought?

But Pennington Wise had a question to ask, and he put it straightforwardly.

“That day you were lured to Sadie ‘The Link’s’ house, Miss Raynor,” he began, “you said, or rather, you agreed when Rodman said you were his fiancée. Will you tell us why?”

Olive flushed, but more with anger than embarrassment.

“The man threatened me,” she said, “he first tried to make love to me, and when I repulsed him, he told me that unless I would promise to marry him he would tell something that would be a living reproach to the memory of my dead guardian. I declared he could say nothing against Amos Gately. Then he whispered that Mr. Gately was a spy! I couldn’t believe it, and—yet, I had seen just a few things—had heard just a few words, that filled my heart with a fear that Mr. Rodman was speaking the truth. So I thought I’d better say what he asked me to, though I knew I’d kill myself rather than ever marry him. But I wasn’t greatly afraid, except that I knew I was in his power. Oh, I don’t like to think about that day!”

Olive broke down and hid her face in her hands, while Zizi’s thin little arms crept round her and held her close.

“Only one more query, Miss Raynor,” and Wise spoke very gently; “are you—were you engaged to Amory Manning?”

Olive lifted her face, and spoke composedly: “No, Mr. Wise, I was never engaged to him. We were good friends, and I think he had a high regard for me, but no words of affection ever passed between us. I admire and respect Mr. Manning as a friend, but that is all.” And then a lovely blush suffused Olive’s face, followed quickly by a look of pain—and we knew she was thinking of Rivers, and his possible defection. Never have I seen a woman’s face so easy to read as Olive Raynor’s. Perhaps because of her pure, transparent character, for in my enforced intimacy with her, as I managed her estate, I had learned that she was an exceptional nature, high-minded, fine, and conscientious in all things.

“I cannot think,” Olive went on, “that Mr. Manning will ever be found. I think he has been killed.”

“Why?” asked Wise, briefly.

“You know, he was a Secret Service man. Many times he has had the narrowest escape with his life, and—I’m not sure of this—but I think now, he was on the track of the nest of spies with which my—with which Mr. Gately was mixed up. A few slight incidents, otherwise unexplainable, make this clear to me now, though I never suspected it before. My uncle disliked Mr. Manning, and it may have been because he knew he was in the Government’s employ. And though I know Mr. Gately would never have moved a finger to put Amory Manning out of the way, yet George Rodman may have done so. Oh, it’s all so mysterious, so complicated—but of this I’m sure, Case Rivers is in no way connected with the whole matter. He is a man from some distant city, he is unacquainted in New York, and he—” here Olive broke down utterly and fell into a hysterical burst of weeping.

Zizi rose and gently urged Olive to go with her from the room.

A silence fell as the two girls disappeared. It was broken by Mrs. Vail, who remarked, dolefully, “I do hope that nice Mr. Rivers will come back, for dear Olive is so in love with him.”

“What!” cried Pennington Wise, “Miss Raynor in love with Rivers! That will never do! Why, we’ve no idea who he is. He may be a fortune-hunter of the lowest type!”

“Oh, no, no!” denied Mrs. Vail, “he is a most courteous gentleman.”

“That doesn’t count,” stormed Wise; “although, perhaps, I spoke too strongly just now when I called him names!”

“Especially as he has no name!” I put in; “in fact, he calls himself a self-named man!”

Wise smiled: “He is a witty chap,” he conceded, “and I like him immensely. But it’s up to us, Brice, to safeguard Miss Raynor’s interests, and a possible suitor for the hand of an heiress ought, at least, to know his own ancestors! And then, again, unless he recovers his memory and can deny it, there’s a fair chance that he had some hand in the Gately murder. We can’t get away from that snowflake pattern drawn on the blotter. Rivers was there, in that room, he sat at Gately’s desk, opposite Gately himself—I mean, of course, this is the way I reconstruct the matter—and if he didn’t shoot Gately then and there, at least, we have no proof that he didn’t.”

“I think he did,” I admitted, for Wise’s statement of the matter was convincing—and beside, Norah thought so, too.

“Well, you think again!” came in a wild little voice, and there was Zizi at my elbow fairly shaking her little clenched fist in my face. “Mr. Badman Brice, you’ve got a lot of follow-up thinks a-coming to you, and you’d better begin ’em right now!”

She looked like a little fury as she danced around my chair and exploded the vials of her wrath. “That Mr. Rivers is a perfectly good man—I know! He and Miss Olive are in love—but they don’t hardly know it themselves—bless ’em! And Mr. Rivers he won’t tell her, anyway, ’cause he’s a nobleman—one of Nature’s maybe—and again, maybe he’s a real one from Canada, or wherever he hails from. But, anyway, he no more killed anybody than I did!”

“All right, Ziz—bully for you! As a loyal friend you’re there with the goods!” Wise smiled at her. “But after all, you’ve got only your loyalty to bank on. You don’t know all this.”

“I’ve got a hunch,” said Zizi, pounding one little fist into the other palm, “and when it comes to certainty—Death and Taxes have nothing on my hunches!”

CHAPTER XVIII

Clear as Crystal

“Hello, people! What’s the matter, Zizi? I’ll be on your side! Bank on me, little one, to the last ditch. And, by jumping Jupiter, Brice, I believe the last ditch is coming my way! No, I haven’t got a strangle-hold on that eloping memory of mine yet, but I ’ave ’opes. I’ve had a glimmer of a gleam of a ray of light on my dark, mysterious past, and I beflew myself straight to good little old Doctor Rankin, who’s my Trouble Man every time. And he says that it’s the beginning of the end. That any day, almost any hour now, I may burst forth a full-memoried and properly christened citizen.”

“Good for you, old chap,” and thrilled at the elation in his tones, I held out my hand. “Go in and win!”

“Oh, won’t it be fine when you remember?” cried Mrs. Vail, wringing her hands in excitement; “why, I knew a man once—”

“Yes,” Rivers encouraged her, in his kindly way, “what happened to the lucky chap?”

“Why, he was affected something as you are—or, as you were—” but Wise couldn’t stand for what seemed likely to be a long story.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Vail,” he interrupted her, “but, really, I must run away now, and I want a word or two with Mr. Rivers first.”

The good lady subsided, but it was plain to be seen she was disappointed.

“May I come in?” and a smiling Olive appeared in the doorway. “Am I wanted?”

“Are you wanted?” the eager, hungry smile Rivers gave her was pathetic. For it was so spontaneous, so gladly welcoming that it was as if a light was suddenly extinguished when the man, on second thought, hid his real feelings and advanced with a courteous but rather formal air.

“You’re always wanted,” he resumed, lightly, but the joy was gone from his tones, and a mere friendly greeting resulted. Surely, he was a gentleman, but he would make no advances while uncertain of his claim in full to that title.

And then, he looked at her curiously, as if wondering whether she would hold any place in his restored memory—should the restoration really occur.

It was Zizi who broke the silence that fell on us all.

“I want my way, Penny,” she said, in such a wistful, pleading tone, that I felt sure no breathing human heart could refuse her.

“What is your way, Zizi?” Wise said, gently.

“I want us all to go—all of us—over to Mr. Gately’s office—”

“Come ahead!” cried Rivers; “I promised old Brice, here, that I’d go this very day, and I broke my appointment. Sorry, old man, but I had to see Friend Doctor, on the jump. Let’s go now, in accordance with the Witch’s whim, and we’ll take the big wagon, and all go.”

He often called Zizi the Witch, or the Elf-child, and she liked it from him, though she usually resented any familiarity.

She smiled at him, but I noted an undercurrent of sadness in her gaze, and I knew she was thinking of the evidence of the snow crystal.

For though Zizi liked Rivers a lot, and though she really had faith in his innocence of wrongdoing, yet her whole fealty was to Pennington Wise, and her hunch about the snowflake drawing might lead to disastrous results in more ways than one.

Olive shrank from going to her guardian’s office—she had never been there since the tragedy—but a few whispered words from Zizi persuaded her to agree to accompany us.

And to help matters, I told her that if she preferred not to go into Mr. Gately’s rooms, she could remain in my office with Norah, while we went.

Mrs. Vail insisted on being of the party, and ran briskly off to get her bonnet.

The atmosphere seemed peculiarly charged with a feeling of impending disaster, and yet, not one of us would have held back. Pennington Wise was very grave and quiet; Zizi, on the other hand, was as one electrified. She sprang about with quick, darting motions, she giggled almost hysterically and then suddenly became most gentle and tender. She ran for Olive’s wraps herself, and bringing them, put them on with the careful air of a mother dressing her child.

Olive, herself, was as one dazed. She, now and then, looked toward Rivers with a shy, yet wistful glance, and he looked back with a big, hearty smile that seemed to warm her very soul.

We piled into the big touring car and made a quick run to the Puritan Building.

Then we all went to my office first. Norah did the honors as prettily as any hostess in her own home, and her ready tact helped Olive to overcome her dread of the place.

“Well,” said Rivers, at last, “what are we waiting for? I thought we were to go over to Mr. Gately’s rooms. Perhaps Miss Raynor and Mrs. Vail would prefer to stay here with Miss MacCormack.”

“No,” said Olive, firmly, “I want to go, too.”

Norah looked at her uncertainly. Then, probably realizing that for Olive to remain behind would be harder than to face whatever might happen, she said, quite casually, “Very well, Miss Raynor, let us all go.”

I think we were all imbued with a sense of fear, a sort of premonition that the visit across the hall would be productive of grave results.

Rivers was the most light-hearted of the party, and yet I somehow felt that his cheerfulness was forced.

“The keys, Brice?” he said; “oh, you have them. All right, my boy, go ahead.”

And then the same stillness that was on the rest of us fell on him, too, and we entered the rooms in silence.

I went first, through Jenny’s room, on to the middle room, and paused just beyond the desk.

Rivers was next, but Zizi pushed her lithe little body through the group, and came through the door just ahead of him.

Rivers entered with the strangest look I have ever seen on any human face. It was a transition—not sudden but gradual—from the dark of forgetfulness to the dawn of memory.

And then, just as he neared Amos Gately’s desk, Zizi, without seeming insistence—indeed, without seeming intent—guided him to the chair opposite Mr. Gately’s desk-chair.

Mechanically, almost unconsciously, Rivers dropped into the seat and sat at the great table-desk—just where, presumably, the slayer of Amos Gately had sat.

With one of her sudden, swift motions, Zizi put the telephone receiver into his left hand, which involuntarily opened to take it, and thus exposed to view the snow crystal drawn on the blotter.

A dead silence fell on us all as Rivers sat there staring at the little sketch. He fairly devoured it with his eyes, his face, meanwhile, becoming set—like a face of stone.

Then, raising his blank, staring eyes, his gaze sought out Olive and, looking straight at her, he gave a low, piercing cry—wrung from him as from a soul in mortal agony—and said:

“I killed Amos Gately!”

I think the scene that followed this announcement was the strangest I have ever experienced. For myself, I felt a sudden sinking, as if the bottom had fallen out of the universe. In fact, a whimsical idea flashed through my stunned brain that I was “falling through the earth,”—or into a bottomless pit.

The white faces that I looked at meant nothing to me—I saw them as in a dream, so dazed was my intelligence.

And then, they assumed their individuality and I saw that Olive’s lovely countenance was a complete blank; like me, she failed to grasp the full meaning of Rivers’ confession.

Mrs. Vail, her eyes closed, lay back limply in a chair, and groaned audibly, while Norah buried her face in a nearby silken curtain and sobbed.

Pennington Wise looked like a man who has just heard the worst—but who expected it. However, the shock had unnerved him, I could see by his tightly clenched hands and set lips, as he strove to control himself.

Rivers sat like a stone statue, only his eyes, desperate in their concentration, showed the fearful mental strain he was suffering.

Zizi—bless her!—stood behind him—hovering, watchful—more like a guardian angel than a Nemesis, and with her eerie, elfin face full of anxious suspense.

Rivers drew a long sigh; he looked round the room, appraisingly, his quick, darting glance taking in every detail, he scanned the desk and all the things on it, he looked through into the farther room—the Blue Room—and saw the great war map hanging on the wall, and then he rose, straightened his broad shoulders, and shook himself as one who arouses from sleep.

Breathlessly, we who watched, saw a great light come into his eyes—a new self-respect, a new sense of importance showed in his whole bearing and, with a smile of infinite tenderness he looked at Olive and said:

“I am Amory Manning!”

Zizi yelled. There is no other word for it. Her shrieks of joy filled the room, and she danced about waving her thin little arms like a veritable pixy.

“It’s all right!” she cried, in ecstacy, “Oh, Penny, it’s all right!” and with a spring across the room, she landed in Wise’s arms, who patted her shoulder, and said:

“There, there, Ziz, don’t flatten out now!”

Meantime, Rivers was finding himself. He stood still, with his hands tightly grasping the chair back, and his face working as he received and classified the memories crowding thickly back upon his burdened brain.

“Wait a minute,” he said, struggling with his thoughts, “I know all about it, but—”

“Amory!” cried Olive, “that’s your voice! I know you now!”

We could all note the change in his speech. Until this moment Rivers had spoken in the peculiar tones I had noticed the first time I met him. Monotonous tones, almost devoid of inflection. Now, his voice was normal, and even more melodious than the average.

Surely, the man had found himself, but if he was really Amory Manning—well, my mind refused to go further.

And he had also said that he killed Amos Gately!

But I felt no need of asking questions, or even of wondering, for the man before us looked so responsible, so capable of self-explanation, that like the rest of the assembly, I merely waited his further speech.

“There’s so much to be told,” he said, and his smile changed to a look of pain. He gave another glance at Olive, and even took a step toward her—then he seemed to collapse, and sinking back into the chair he had vacated, he hid his face in his hands and groaned.

“Go on!” whispered an imperious little voice, and Zizi was behind him again, her hand on his shoulder, her tones urgent and encouraging.

“I will!” and Manning, for we felt no doubt of his identity now—spoke firmly and bravely. He did not look at Olive, and it was clear that this was intentional.

Instead, he turned to Zizi, and seemed to address himself to her.

He couldn’t have done better if he wanted helpful sympathy, for the black eyes that gazed at him were soft and tender with something like a maternal sweetness.

This mood of Zizi’s, rarely shown, was one of her chiefest charms, and Manning gratefully accepted it, and let it help him.

“Shall I tell all—now and here?” he asked, glancing at Pennington Wise.

“Yes,” said the detective, after a moment’s thought. “Yes, if you will.”

“Very well, then.” Manning was entirely composed now, but it was evident he was holding himself together by a strong effort. Also, he carefully refrained from looking in Olive’s direction.

This alarmed me a little, for to my mind, it argued him a guilty man, and, that, in fact, he had declared himself to be.

Norah and I exchanged glances of understanding—or, rather, of not understanding—and Manning began his story.

“I think I will begin right here,” he said, in a slow, methodical way, and with the air of one who has a disagreeable duty to perform, but who has no intention of shirking any part of it.

“I remember everything—everything—and it is not all pleasant remembrance! But it must be told, and then I must go at once and report to my superiors.

“I am Amory Manning, a special agent in the Secret Service. I was detailed by the Government to hunt down a certain branch of the enemy spy system in New York City, and in pursuance of my duty, I learned that Amos Gately was the man I sought.”

Manning still kept his glance averted from Olive, indeed, he looked almost constantly at Zizi, whose dark little face, lovely in its sympathy, seemed to drink in his every word.

“I knew all about Rodman, I was on the trail of Sadie, ‘The Link,’ and I came here, that afternoon, primarily to get an incriminating paper, which would have been positive evidence against Gately, and I had orders to arrest him if he was unable to clear himself.

“We had a stormy interview, and I found the man was guilty of the blackest treason. He had been a receiver of the stolen information sold by ‘The Link,’ and had transmitted it, by secret channels of his own, to the enemy government. I charged him with this, and he put up a fight. I tried to overcome him, and take him peaceably, but he was desperate and evaded my grasp. He ran toward that map in the other room, and I stood just here, where I am now sitting. I had overturned the chair in our struggle and as I suddenly saw him push aside the map and enter what was beyond all doubt a secret mode of exit, I fired at him. Of course, I meant merely to wing him—merely to prevent his escape—but as I fired he turned and received the bullet in his heart. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time, nor did I know where he had gone. But I heard the car descend, and knew that it must be a private elevator.

“I ran into that room, and finding the elevator entrance, behind the map, fastened, I flew out to the hall and downstairs. In my haste, there being no car waiting, I thought I could get down faster by the stairs. But after running down two flights, I saw a waiting elevator and got in. I had dropped my pistol somewhere when trying to stuff it into my overcoat pocket as I ran downstairs. But I gave no thought to anything save preventing the escape of my prisoner. Of course, I didn’t then know how seriously he was hurt.

“I failed to find the exit from the private elevator, and never dreaming it was in the building next door, I hunted this building for quite a time. I investigated the ground floor, the basement and sub-basement, but couldn’t find it. Greatly puzzled, I began the search all over again, and then, Olive—Miss Raynor, came, and—later, I found that others had discovered the dead body of the man I had shot.

“I waited only to be sure of this, and then started at once to report to the Federal Bureau.”

“I know it,” I interrupted, unable to keep quiet, as the recollection surged over me, “and you went down Third Avenue on the street-car—”

“I did,” Manning’s face showed only an intense effort at reconstructing the scene, “I was going to stop at my rooms on the way, for something I needed, and—”

“Wait a minute,” Wise said, “I’m interested in the Case Rivers phase of your existence. Don’t forget you’re the Man Who Fell Through the Earth.”

A strange smile passed over Manning’s face.

“I’m just coming to that,” he said; “I am that man, and I can tell you right now, how, where, and why I made the trip!”

All eyes were upon him. This strange talk—and he had been so sensible up to now. Was the hallucination of falling through the earth destined to mar his newly returned sanity?

“Go on,” repeated Zizi, and the calmness of her voice restored Manning’s poise, and also raised my hopes of a plausible explanation.

“You were with me, Brice,” Manning looked at me, as if for corroboration.

“Yes; I was in the car with you, but we were not near enough to speak. There was a big crowd—and I was standing at the rear end, while you were well forward. But I say, Rivers, it’s hard to believe that man in the car was you! Why, you’re not the same type—”

“Wait a minute,” the speaker waved his hand as if to check interruption, “I am Manning—I’ll explain later—but now I want to get that occasion well in hand. I got off the front end of the car—I don’t know what you did—and as I stepped off, a sudden fierce blast of wind nearly took me off my feet. I was right in the middle of the street but it seemed the middle of a howling blizzard, and as I took a step—I went down an open manhole into the sewer.

“This I distinctly remember—the street cleaners were working there, shoveling the snow into the sewer. They had no business to leave the manhole open and unguarded, but that black squall was so sudden and terrific, no one could see or know anything for the time being.

“However, I knew perfectly well, as I fell in, what had happened, but then—and I remember this, too—I fell and fell—down, down—it seemed for miles; I was whirled dizzily about—but still I fell—on and on—interminably. I felt my consciousness going—at first, abnormally acute, my senses became dulled, and I had only a sensation of falling—ever falling—through the earth!

“There my memory ceases. And as I next remember finding myself in a bed in Bellevue Hospital, and as I have had detailed to me the full account of my being found floating, nearly dead, in the East River, I can only accept the inevitable conclusion that I was carried by the rush of the sewer, straight out to the river, and picked up for dead.

“That a sign of life was found, after I was taken to the morgue, was of the nature of a miracle, and only the most desperate efforts fanned that little spark into resuscitation. The rest you know. The shock, the exposure, the cold, and perhaps a blow or two on my head, all combined, resulted in a total loss of memory as to my identity or to the events of my former life.

“I had only remaining the positive recollection of that fall—” Manning shuddered—“that interminable, that never-ending fall through the earth.”

“But you fell through water,” said Wise, his eyes staring at the narrator of all this.

“Not to my knowledge. My realization of falling only lasted until I struck the water in the sewer. That, doubtless, knocked me out for good and all—mentally, I mean. I have to thank my wonderful vitality and strong constitution for the fact that I really lived through the catastrophe. Think what it means! Hurtled through that rushing torrent of a sewer half filled with melted snow and water—flung out into the river, dashed about among the floating cakes of ice, and all with sufficient force to tear off my clothing—and yet to live through it!”

“Going some!” cried Zizi, and the sparkle of her dancing eyes and the delight on her small, smiling face, made the rude phrase seem quite fit for the occasion.

“And so,” Manning went on, quietly, “I have accomplished my quests. I have been working hard to discover three things—my own identity, the whereabouts of Amory Manning, and—the slayer of Amos Gately. I, myself, am the answer to all three questions.”

A silence fell; and then Olive spoke.

“You are no slayer—you are no murderer. You shot Mr. Gately by accident, in the pursuance of your duty. You are not only exonerated, but you did a deed, in freeing the world of a traitor, that entitles you to a Distinguished Service Cross! I respected my guardian—I was fond of him—but now I know what he was. I have only contempt and hatred of him! You, Amory, are a hero!—my hero.”

Olive held out her hands with a beautiful gesture of affection, and Manning strode across the room to her side.

“Now I have the only forgiveness I care for,” he said, and his face was radiant. “Now, I must go at once, and report. My duty lies to my country—to my government! Oh, there are so many things yet to think of! They—the Government—offered a reward for me!”

“Which you have won yourself!” exclaimed Penny Wise.

“Yes,” chuckled Zizi, “and you’ve won the reward offered for Mr. Gately’s—” she hesitated—“for the man who freed the world of one more traitorous viper!”

“And, incidentally,” I added, “you’ve cleared up the puzzle of the man who fell through the earth!”

“It is well that Gately is no more,” Manning said, musingly; “he was especially dangerous because he was in such a high position and so trusted by everybody. Rodman was an equal scoundrel, but he worked inconspicuously. Gately banked on his reputation for honor and probity—used his own well-earned fame to further the meanest cause on earth!

“Whatever happens, I’m glad he is unable to do further harm. I didn’t mean to kill him—it was an accident—but the world is well rid of him.”

“Amen,” said Olive, softly.

“Well, the end justifies the means,” said Mrs. Vail, a little hysterically. “Why, once I heard of—”

Ruthlessly, I shut her off.

“Accept my greetings, Mr. Manning,” I said, offering my hand to our new-found friend. “I’m proud to know you!”

And then there was a scene of handshaking and smiling welcome such as any hero might be proud to receive.

“Wait a minute,” Manning said, at last, “that day, I was hunting a paper, you know. If it was sent off, there will yet be trouble from it. Has it been found, do you know, Mr. Wise?”

“No; what sort of a paper?”

“One of the stolen telegrams. It was concealed, I had reason to think, somewhere in Gately’s desk—”

“Do you know that?”

“I think so—wait—I had just thought I knew where to look for it, when Gately said something that made me telephone for assistance in his arrest. I was waiting for an answer to my call—”

“When you drew the snow crystal!” Zizi cried.

“Yes,” he smiled. “And then, I saw something that hinted a possible hiding-place—ah, here it is!”

He stepped to the desk and picked up the heavy, ornate gold penholder. He fussed with it a moment, and then, unscrewing it in the middle, showed that it was a cleverly constructed place to hide a tiny roll of thin paper.

There was such a roll in it, and pulling it out, Manning grinned with glee. “All right,” he cried, joyfully; “this is the paper, a Government secret! See, you read it by that carriage-call check, and it’s safe now!”

It was a paper filled with rows of letters, such a paper as had been found in Sadie’s possession and also in Rodman’s.

“Now, I am satisfied,” Manning declared; “and now I must go straight down to the Federal Bureau. But first—”

“Sure!” said Zizi, reading his thoughts; “we’re excused!”

And with a saucy smile, she flew over and kissed Olive heartily. Then, with an imperious air, she took command, and almost before we knew it she had herded every last one of us, except Olive and Manning, across the hall to my office.

I was the last to go, and Manning smiled broadly as he called after me, “I want Miss Raynor to say once more that she exonerates me, and then I’ll report to my other Superior!”

Laughing happily, I entered my office, and found it a scene of hilarious gayety. Mrs. Vail was positively cavorting about, as Norah waltzed her up and down the room; Pennington Wise was sitting on the corner of my desk whistling dance music for them, and Zizi, her arms waving, executed a sort of glory dance of her own making-up.

After a time, the door of the Gately room opened, and Olive’s blushing face appeared, followed by that of the Man Who Fell Through the Earth.

“I want to correct a misstatement of mine,” she said; “I told you I wasn’t engaged to Amory Manning—but—I am!”

The two came over to my office, and the ovation we gave them was second only to our reception of Manning himself a few moments before.

“Are you sure it is Manning?” Wise teased her.

“Yes,” said Olive, most seriously. “You see he was in disguise when he was himself, and so—”

Her voice was lost in the shout that went up at her remark, and she looked around in bewilderment.

“She’s right,” said Manning, smiling; “I was. You see, when I became a Secret Service man, I had certain peculiar duties assigned me and it was important that I shouldn’t be known. So I adopted a permanent disguise—oh, nothing much—merely a mild dye for my hair and beard, which washed off easily, and a pair of big, horn-rimmed specs, which were really rather becoming than otherwise. But Olive, and many of my acquaintances knew me only in this way. I wore a Vandyke beard, and a small mustache of the Charles I type.

“Then you see, when I was taken in at the hospital, and shaved, I continued to adopt a clean-shaven face. Also, the dye was thoroughly washed out in the sewer, and as my memory was washed out with it, I experienced no surprise at finding a light-haired man in my mirror.

“Olive tells me, too, that my voice was of a totally different caliber, due, no doubt, to a certain vacuity made in my brain by the loss of my memory. Oh, well, that’s the story. And but for my peculiarity of drawing snow crystals—a thing I’ve done just about all my life—and but for Zizi’s quick-witted realization of this habit of mine, I might never have regained consciousness of my true personality!”

“Probably something else would have brought it about,” said Wise, “but your drawing of the snow crystals began with Brice’s first interview with you. I ought to have found that drawing on Gately’s desk long ago! Stoo-pid!” and he beat his head in mock self-abasement.

“Yes,” said Zizi, giving Wise a smile that was both impudent and affectionate, “you should have, oh, Wise Guy! You ought to have found that snowflake drawing for yourself.”

“Oh, that’s what I have you for, Ziz, to look up clues for me.”

“Of course you do, Penny Wise. I’m only your Pound Foolish, but at least, I can see through a clue that is as clear as crystal!”