Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/335

 Kincheloe; and knowledge of Kincheloe's death might halt any plans Loutrelle had on hand.

Lucas waited until his son appeared and, having breakfasted, was ready to start downtown. "This looks to me," said Lucas to Luke, showing the paragraph, "like our friend Kincheloe."

"The name they say," said Luke, "is Clerkerton."

"That was a friend of Kincheloe's," Lucas said. "I've heard him mentioned."

"Oh!" said Luke. "I'll send some one over from the office to identify him."

Accordingly the afternoon newspapers printed the fact that the man lost in the river "with a girl" had been one Merrill Kincheloe, who had been of the household of Lucas Cullen, Senior, now of St. Florentin. Mrs. Kincheloe, who was Mr. Cullen's secretary, was at St. Florentin but had been wired for.

Barney read this item that afternoon; and three days later Ethel, in Sheridan, opened a fat envelope addressed to her in Barney's writing to discover within clippings from Chicago papers which related all the publicly discoverable facts of Kincheloe's life and of the manner of his death. Barney had added only a few lines, saying that he was well and very busy and hoped before long to be able to write to her more fully; he thanked her for the few brief letters she had written him recounting her occupations.

He had made no comment whatever about Kincheloe's death; and though Ethel experienced, with the reading of the clippings, the shock which inevitably comes when one learns of the destruction of a person whom one has known well, yet the succeeding sensation partook of relief. For Kincheloe, even though the tool of her grandfather, had been a murderer and, during her days