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 "No: that's flat."

"Where may he be now? Do you know that?"

"I do not."

"That's flat too, sir?"

"Absolutely."

They gave me up after a while; and the reporters arrived, bringing details not mentioned to me by Mullaney or his companion. The reporters had to see all the Fanneal household and learn what we thought of Jerry now; they wanted fresh pictures, previously unpublished, of Jerry and of the rest of us; they had no doubt at all that Jerry had committed the murder.

"Why would he?" I asked them.

"Why?" was exactly what they wished most to know. They asked, "When Jerry was one of your family and before he 'reverted,' had he ever quarrelled with or taken a particular dislike to Winton Scofield?"

They were all full of that "reversion" idea which they played up in their papers.

I went to my office that morning, not with an intention of doing any business but to wait by my private wire on which yesterday Jerry had called me. Likely enough it was being watched