stuck to it afterward when they learned the truth, lest a change in their story might serve to cast suspicion upon them?"

"And why may they not have done it? How is one to be certain that this appearance of candour is not all pretence?"

Even Duncan's sombre countenance had to relax into a smile at that. "Good Lord, no," he rejoined emphatically. "If you once saw them, Gwen, you'd never need to ask the question. They are the very limit of stupid simplicity. No; Bender's idea," he hesitated a moment, "is that the job was engineered at least by a professional, some chap he calls Harry Glenn.-Did you speak?" for I had drawn in my breath sharply at this piece of intelligence.

"No; go on," I cried excitedly. "What reason has he for suspecting this Harry Glenn?"

The Captain's lip curled a bit scornfully. "A no end silly one, to my notion. All he has to go on is a half-smoked cigar he found down by the old hollow tree at the edge of the lawn, and which he says is the same brand that Glenn is used to smoking. A trifle far-fetched, don't you think?" I only smiled and murmured, "Perhaps," but inwardly I was rather cynically reflecting that Mr.

Jerry Bender, for all his contempt of "storybook" methods, had been extremely prompt in stealing my thunder.

"Yet all this seems conventional enough in the way of an investigation, Duncan," I commented. "Why should you have gotten yourself so stirred up over it?"

"Oh, it wasn't so much that part of it," faltered the Captain, flushing up once more as he recalled his wrongs. "I don't object to his cooking up all the fool theories he has a mind to, but I do draw the line at the hints he threw out that I was not telling the truth. I may have delusions, and, by Jove, if these yokels are on the square it looks as though I did have, but even so," hotly, "I don't choose to have any t'uppenny pint-pot of a mousing thief-catcher insinuate that I am lying to shield some one else!"

"Ah," I cried, fathoming the difficulty at last, "so Bender's suspicions included some one else beside Harry Glenn? Some one you might be deemed to have an interest in shielding?"

CHAPTER VIII

THE WEB OF CIRCUMSTANCE

THE Captain gave a quick, suppressed exclamation of annoyance at having betrayed himself, but refused to confirm my conclusion in words. In a stubborn silence he paced up and down the room, chewing savagely on an unlighted cigar.

"See here, Duncan," I said at last, rising to my feet and placing myself directly in his path, "I am the person most vitally interested in this matter, and I think I have a right to insist upon frankness. If I am to be made the target for these detectives' animadversions, or if any facts have cropped out in the investigation which appear prejudicial to me, is it not far better that I should know them? I am neither a child nor an imbecile, but a woman capable of defending herself, and I do not propose to fight longer in the dark. Now if Bender has accused me of being the thief"

"He'd better not do so openly," interrupted the Captain fiercely, "or I'll break the insignificant

little gnat in two. By Jove, I came within an ace of doing it anyway when he commenced to set up those blasted hints and suppositions of his today. Insinuating that you might have been pals with that thieving French maid, indeed!"

"I, pals with Estelle?" I cried in amazement. "No wonder you called the man insane. Why, I doubt if I ever exchanged over a dozen words with her in my whole life. What in the world could have inspired such an idea as that in the fellow's brain ?"

"Well, you know it did look a little queer," muttered the Captain grudgingly, "her coming here yesterday and all that.”

"Her coming here?" I repeated dully. "Estelle? Here to see me? Surely you are mistaken. Why in heaven's name should Estelle have come to me?"

"That is just the question I came near knocking Bender down for asking to-day," rejoined the Captain grimly. "It's neither his nor anybody's business whom you choose to receive in your "This last defiantly enough, yet with a certain wistfulness, which showed that he was more than a little hurt by what he evidently deemed my want of confidence in him.

rooms."

"But she was not here, Duncan," I protested. "Where did Bender ever get the notion she had been? There is absolutely no foundation for it, no reason which could have caused her to seek me out. I have not set eyes on her since the time I left Onyx Court."

But the bewildered expression only deepened in his eyes. "Most extraordinary! Really, most extraordinary!" he kept repeating to himself.

"What is so extraordinary?" I demanded sharply, his reiterated strain commencing to get on my nerves. "Do you mean to imply that you doubt my word on so simple a matter?"

"Oh, no," he disclaimed hastily. "It is only that the police are so positive in their statements. The two things are a bit difficult to reconcile, don't you know?"

"The police?" quickly. "You are not trying to tell me that the police accuse me of having had dealings with Estelle?”

"Well, something like that," he admitted unwillingly. "It seems," consenting at last to make himself plain, “that this girl took umbrage at some of the questions Van Suyden and the police were putting to her, and threw up her billet yesterday morning without a moment's warning.