brow; but he plainly purposed sticking to his guns.

To his unspoken question I gave a quick, barely perceptible nod. "Aren't you both a bit absurd?" he returned testily to their inquiry. "Who else could it have been?”

Then, giving them no time for further interrogation, he deftly shifted his rôle to that of examiner.

"Now, if you are satisfied,” he said, addressing Baggerly direct, "I should like to have an explanation for this unwarranted intrusion, that man," indicating the policeman, "with a drawn weapon. Will you kindly give me some reason for such a demonstration ?"

Baggerly showed manifest confusion. "I suppose it is a mistake,” he granted sullenly. "A mistake?" repeated the Captain with lifted eyebrows.

"Yes," hastily; "but you must understand we had no other idea than that we should find Harry Glenn concealed about the premises. Bender saw him, as he supposed, on his way here in his automobile, and followed him to the door; but was delayed by the elevator boy's trying to convince him that no such person was in the house."

"Yes," broke in Bender, equally on the defensive; "and then Baggerly claimed to have met him on the floor above, and said that he had run down the corridor to this apartment."

"Ah," commented the Captain with withering sarcasm; “and it was therefore necessary to gather up an army before you dared move on the enemy's position?"

"Not at all," disclaimed Baggerly, reddening under the taunt; "we were too busy overhauling Sonnenthal's apartment in search of the missing jewels to come at once. You must understand," he hastily explained, "that Sonnenthal has been the prime mover in this whole affair."

"But if that is so,” demanded the Captain after he had mastered his natural surprise at this intelligence, a surprise in which I felt it behooved me also to join,-"if that is so, what necessity had you for coming here with all this impressive muster ?"

"Why, haven't I told you we were in search of Glenn ?" retorted Baggerly with some impatience. "We have now satisfied ourselves that the stones are not in Sonnenthal's apartment; and we think if we can get hold of Glenn, we may force him to divulge their real hiding place."

"But why not wring it out of Sonnenthal himself? If he has been the leading spirit in the enterprise, he ought certainly to know that."

Baggerly gave a start. "I forgot," he said. "You are, of course, still in ignorance.-Why," hesitatingly, "Sonnenthal is hardly in a position to tell. He was murdered in his own room about half an hour ago."

"Murdered?" exclaimed both Captain McCracken and myself in shocked horror.

Baggerly nodded. "Yes; by Estelle Lavelle." "Estelle Lavelle !" I repeated. "Not Mrs. Van Suyden's maid? Why-Why-!”

"Mrs. Van Suyden's maid," assented Baggerly gravely. "I had followed her to his rooms tonight and was listening at the door to a quarrel between them, when I looked up to see Glenn, as I supposed, disappearing around the corner of the corridor. I started in pursuit, and would have overtaken him; but just as I reached the foot of the stairs a shot rang out.

"Since it was you I was chasing, McCracken," he interrupted himself with a sudden thought, "I am surprised that you did not also hear the report ?"

"It is odd," murmured the Captain non-committally.

"Well, at any rate," continued Baggerly, “I hurriedly summoned assistance from the office and broke open the door; but it was then too late to prevent the tragedy. Sonnenthal, shot through the heart, had fallen dead across a chair, while near by on the floor lay the woman mortally wounded. She had completed her bloody work by turning the weapon on herself "We have had her removed to a hospital, although the physicians say she cannot live until morning; but before she left she made a statement which, with the information already in our possession, clears up the last vestige of uncertainty in regard to the robbery at Onyx Court."

CHAPTER VII

READING THE RIDDLE

BENDER and the officer, who had been whispering together in an interested aside during our colloquy, at this point took their departure; but Baggerly, in response to our eager queries, detailed briefly for us the facts elicited by this latest development.

"Sonnenthal, it seems," he went on in rapid narration, "by reason of his dissipations and extravagances, found himself, a year or two ago, face to face with ruin. Spurred on by the very desperation of his predicament, he finally evolved a plan of allying himself with a band of clever thieves, and disposing of the gems which came into his hands through their agency, as though he had received them in the regular channels of trade.

"At first he confined himself for better safety to dealing only with a gang of crooks working in London; but waxing bolder, he has recently