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 was only an alley cat brushing against my legs.

My quarry had vanished into the fog, and to look for him would be to hunt the proverbial needle in the good old haystack. It came to me then that I had been all kinds of a fool, rushing out of the Drew house like that at the moment of my gruesome discovery. I had not meant to come so far, of course—but here I was, and there was nothing to do but hurry back. How about Mary Will? Had she, perhaps, been the second person to enter the dining-room, and been frightened half to death by what she found there?

I swung on my heel to reenter the garden—and at that instant the gate banged shut in my face. The wind? Nonsense, there was no wind. With a sickening sense of being tricked I put my hand on the knob. I turned and pushed. As I expected, the gate was securely locked on the inside. Rh