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 town hawkshaws to arrange about finger-prints and search for clues.

When Cosby came in, and presently O. T. Morgan himself, half-dressed, Henry felt that any faint responsibility requiring his presence had ended. He was rather puzzled by it and wanted to get away by himself and think. There was such an awful lot of things for him to think about now anyway. So he made his way out of the group unnoticed and started for his hotel.

All told perhaps forty minutes had elapsed since the explosion. Thinking to save time, he started diagonally across the courthouse lawn, which was tree-studded and shrubbery-embroidered. "Hornblower? It would be like that devil—trying to throw a smoke-screen over the title issue by a theatrical stunt like this!" So he was speculating, none too conscious of immediate surroundings until he ran head on into an automobile, half-enveloped in the shrubbery. It was a touring car with the top up, lightless, but with its shape discernible in the faint glow of the stars, and the hood warm as if the engine had just been running.

"Funny place to park a car!" he had breathed in a startled undertone, when there came to his ears for the second time this night the sound of a low explosion.

"Another?" he ejaculated, nerves already tense, and as he did so the windows in the end of the courthouse nearest to him rattled mockingly.

"By George! That explosion was in there," he decided with sudden gravity, "and that's the Recorder's office on that end. Why, hell's bells! It must be Hornblower sure. Cute of his gang, I'll say—nervy, too—to come right over here and go to work in entire safety when they've got every policeman in the town hanging