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while this was all satisfactory to the friends of Andrew Barham it was not so easily accepted by the police.

Hutchins and Dickson both listened to the whole story as detailed by Lorimer Lane to them.

“Are you sure about this thing?” Dickson asked. “I had sort of a notion that Locke was a masquerader, but I couldn’t make the facts fit it. Why, the two men are directly opposite in character—I mean Barham and the artist.”

“No, they’re not,” Lane contradicted. “That’s what I noticed first. They have much in common. The appointments of Locke’s bathroom, the fine towels, the expensive soaps and all that, first struck me as being out of keeping with a poor artist, and hinted at a cultured gentleman. The furniture of the place is not elaborate, but all the little personal belongings betoken a luxury-loving nature. Oh, well, the man himself told me the whole story—we can’t very well doubt it.”

“No, of course not,” Dickson agreed, “but it’s a pretty big yarn to swallow. And, moreover, that settles the question of the murder. Of course it was Barham who killed his wife. She went down there to spy on him and he killed her and ran away. Too easy. All for the love of the little Cutler girl, of course.”

“I don’t think Barham killed his wife,” Lane demurred. “He isn’t the sort to do that. And, too, he said himself