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Rh said soberly. "When the village fire-department got there they found nothing left but a mass of charred timbers washing around between the piles and no trace of the bodies."

"The lamp!" Odell ejaculated. "There wasn't enough oil in it to last more than an hour longer, at most. Tony must have waked up and lurched against it, for there wasn't any wind to blow it over. Gad! what a death for him!"

An hour later, after making himself presentable and with the data which the chief had given him carefully catalogued in his mind, the detective set out for the Meade house. His first intention was to see Gene and force from him an explanation of that note which Drew had made an excuse for the interview in the room back of the shop, and he anticipated that the explanation would merely confirm his own later suspicion; but that would be as so much dead wood out of his path.

He had interviewed neither Lorne nor his youngest step-daughter as yet, and if they could furnish him with no clue the process of elimination was all that was left to him. The chief was even now honeycombing the city for Drew, but his apprehension was a matter of relative unimportance to Odell; he was too deeply engrossed in the problem which the recent events in the Meade house presented to give a thought to personal reprisal for his abduction; and he no longer believed that Farley Drew had any hand in the series of crimes he was investigating.

Peters, looking slightly better than at their last meeting, opened the door to him, and Miss Meade met him with outstretched hand in the hall.

"Oh, Sergeant Odell, I'm so glad that you have come!"