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 mained. His eye as it met mine was cold and calculating, and I knew that if he could fix a semblance of guilt on my head he would do it.

A man prominent in San Francisco life was murdered, there would be an outcry in the newspapers, and an arrest must be made to save the face of the police—the guilty man if possible; if not, some one who seemed guilty.

“Let’s go back,” he said with sudden decision. “Henry Drew was giving a birthday party to-night. I noticed, Mr. Drew, that when you saw the cake with the fifty candles you appeared surprised. I take it this was not your father’s birthday.”

“It most certainly was not,” Mark Drew replied. “If you will consult the family Bible in the library you will find that my father was born, not in December but in March. He was sixty-nine years old last March.”

“Sixty-nine,” mused Barnes. “Yet Rh