Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/75

 gone to the grave with Miss Pomeroy’s father? Val shrugged his shoulders and gave it up.

Where did the man without hands come into this, anyway? Val knew now that it was the same who had drugged him and stolen the books. That being the case, probably he could cast light upon the murder of poor old Mat Masterson. In fact, undoubtedly he? could. Evidently he did not commit the murder himself—how could a man with no hands beat in another’s head with a heavy, blunt instrument? But he was in the affair, that was certain.

So was Jessica Pomeroy, for that matter. He remembered now that she had thought him from the police—that she had shown fear at mention of the murder, and fear at the advent of this man, this uncanny stranger with the wicked eyes and mouth and the mutilated limbs. Yet, not being implicated herself in the murder, of course—being nothing but an innocent bystander, as it were, why should she not hand over this man to the police and let them sift the matter to the bottom?

Val decided that she could not do that. There was far more to this affair than appeared on the surface; there were things no stranger should know about; no stranger, that is, beside himself. But he had begun not to consider himself a stranger where this beautiful girl was concerned. In the two short glimpses he had had of her, she had already taken possession of his thoughts to the exclusion of almost every other subject.

What was the mystery that surrounded her? Val wondered. Probably, in some way, she was in the power of this sinister cripple. She feared him, of that he was certain; yet she did not refuse to admit him to her apartment; and, indeed, he entered as though