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Rh re-read the details with the greatest care, in the effort to find where that connection lay.

But it was impossible to see how Tremaine could be implicated in the Edgemere mystery even in the least degree—his alibi was perfect. On the other hand, the evidence against young Drysdale seemed complete in every link. Certainly, none of the papers doubted his guilt, and they handled his past career and his family history with a minuteness and freedom which must have been most trying to his friends. Coroner Heffelbower came in for the lion’s share of praise—everyone agreed that he had conducted the case with rare skill and acumen. Of course, the Record had his photograph, as well as those of his wife and six children, and as I looked at his round face, I fancied him strutting back and forth in his saloon, inflated with pride, and listening approvingly to the constant ringing of the cash-register. It’s an ill wind—but certainly there was no denying that he had handled the case adroitly.

Drysdale, it appeared, had been lodged in the jail at Babylon, and steadfastly refused to make any statement, or to explain his absence from the house. No reporters had been admitted to Edgemere—though that fact did not prevent two or three of them from writing minute descriptions of the condition of affairs there, and publishing interviews with the members of the family. Marvellous accounts were given of the exquisite beauty and immense value of the missing necklace, and the Record published a drawing of it “from a description by Tiffany.”

We pulled into the station, and I took a car down