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OR some minutes after he had brought his interview with Miss Chalmers to a close Barry Odell tramped back and forth across the library-floor deep in thought. It was patent that the young woman had lied when she mentioned a hotel as her proposed destination that morning; yet there had been truth and a ring of desperation in her tone when she defied her aunt and declared that she had no intention of going near any of their friends. If Samuel Titheredge's tale of her infatuation for Farley Drew were based on fact it might have been her intention to go to him; but the detective knew that her reception had she done so would have meant a sad awakening for her.

Farley Drew might have been quite willing to marry a young girl of assured social position and comparative wealth even in these days of colossal fortunes; but to elope with her when the shadow of murder hung over her home, and notoriety of the most sinister sort loomed close, would have been an entirely different matter. Drew himself was traveling too close to the line just then, as the detective knew, to invite any publicity and place himself even indirectly in the path of the investigation.

He had not yet had an opportunity to examine the letters which he had appropriated from Gene's desk, but he had 112