With the almost disappointed thing of might purring tamely along through the far-spread town, and then on through level ways of beauty, leading the way to Gotham, Dorothy found that she was still clinging fast to Jerold's arm, after nearly ten minutes of peace.

Then she waked, as it were, and shyly withdrew her hand.

Garrison had felt himself transported literally, more by the ecstasy of having her thus put dependence upon him than by any mere flight of the car. He underwent a sense of loss when the strain subsided, and her trembling hold relaxed and fell from his arm.

Nevertheless, she clung to the roses. His heart had taken time to beat a stroke in joy during that moment of stress at the house, when she had caused a few seconds' added delay to gather up the crushed and faded flowers.

Since speaking to the driver last Garrison had been content to sit beside the girl in silence. There was much he must ask, and much she must tell, but for this little time of calm and delight he could not break the spell. Once more, however, his abounding confidence in her goodness, her innocence, and deep-lying beauty of character rose triumphant over fears. Once more the spell of a mighty love was laid upon his heart. He did not know and could not know that Dorothy, too, was Cupid's victim—that she loved him with a strange and joyous intensity, but he did know that the whole vast world was no price for this moment of rapture.

She was the first to speak.

"Why did we have to run away? Aren't you supposed to have a perfect right to—to take me wherever you please—especially from a place like that, and such outrageous treatment?"

"I am only supposed to have that right," he answered. "As a matter of fact, I committed a species of violence in Theodore's house, compelling him to act at the point of the gun. Technically speaking, I had no right to proceed so far. But, aside from that, when they sprung the alarm—well, the time had come for action.

"Had the constable dragged me away, as a legal offender—which he would doubtless have done on the charge of two householding citizens—the delay would have been most annoying, while a too close investigation of my status as a husband might have proved even more embarrassing."

A wave of crimson swept across her face.

"Of course." She relapsed into silence for a moment. Then she added:
"What does it all mean, anyway? How dared they carry me off like this?
How did you happen to come? When did you find that I had gone? What
do you think we'd better do?"

"Answer one question at a time," said Garrison, stuffing his handkerchief into the tube, lest the driver overhear their conversation. "There is much to be explained between us. In the first place, tell me, Dorothy, what happened just after I 'phoned you last evening, and you made an appointment to meet me in the park."

"Why, I hardly know," she said, her face once more a trifle pale. "I went upstairs to get ready, thinking to slip out unobserved. In the act of putting on my hat, I was suddenly smothered in the folds of a strong-smelling towel thrown over my head, and since that time I have scarcely known anything till this morning, when I waked in the bed at Theodore's house, fully dressed, and chained as you saw me."

"But—these roses?" he said, lightly placing his hand upon them. "How did you happen to have them along?"

It was not a question pertinent to the issues in hand, but it meant a great deal to his heart.

"Why—I—I was wearing them—that's all," she stammered. "No one stopped to take them off."

He was satisfied. He wished they might once and for all dismiss the world, with all its vexations, its mysteries, and pains, and ride on like this, through the June-created loveliness bathed in its sunlight—comrades and lovers, forever.

The hour, however, was not for dreaming. There were grim facts affecting them both, and much to be cleared between them. Moreover he was merely hired to enact a rÔle that, if it sometimes called for a show of tender love, was still but a rÔle, after all. He attacked the business directly.

"We require an understanding on a great many topics," he said to her slowly. "After I 'phoned you I went to the park, was caught in the rain, and attacked by two ruffians, who knocked me down, and left me to what they supposed would be certain destruction."

"Jerold!" she said, and his name thus on her lips, with no one by to whom she was acting, gave him an exquisite pleasure. There was no possibility of guilty knowledge on her part. Of this he was thoroughly convinced. "You? Attacked?"

"Later," he resumed, "when I recovered, I went to the house in Ninety-third Street, was admitted by the woman in charge, and remained all night, after taking the liberty of examining all the apartments."

She looked at him in utter amazement.

"Why—but what does it—— You, attacked in the park—these lawless deeds—you stayed all night—— And you found I had been carried away?"

"No; I merely thought so. The woman knew nothing. But I presently discovered a number of interesting things. Theodore has installed a private 'phone in his closet, and by means thereof had overheard our appointment. Your bureau and dressing-case had both been searched——"

"For the necklaces!" she cried. "You have them safe?"

"I thought it might have been the jewels—or your marriage certificate," he said, alive to numerous points in the case which, he felt, were about to develop.

She turned a trifle pale.

"I've sewn the certificate—where I'm sure they'd never find it," she said. "But the jewels are safe?"

"Quite safe," he said, making a mental note of her insistence on the topic. "I then discovered the address of the Woodsite house, and you know the rest."

"It's terrible! The whole thing is terrible!" she said. "I wouldn't have thought they'd dare to do such things! I don't know what we're going to do. We're neither of us safe!"

"You must help me all you can," he said, laying his hand for a moment on her arm. "I've been fighting in the dark. I must find you apartments where you will not be discovered by the Robinsons, whose criminal designs on the property inheritance will halt at nothing, and—you must tell me all you can."

"I will," she said; "only——"

And there she halted, her eyes raised to his in mute appeal, a dumb fear expressed in their depths.

They had both avoided the topic of the murder, at the news of which she had fainted. Garrison almost feared it, and Dorothy evidently dreaded its approach.

More than anything else Garrison felt he must know she was innocent. That was the one vital thing to him now, whether she could ever return his love or not. He loved her in every conceivable manner, fondly, passionately, sacredly, with the tenderest wishes for her comfort and happiness. He believed in her now as he always had, whensoever they were together. Nevertheless, he could not abandon all his faculties and plunge into folly like a blind and confident fool.

"I'd like to ask about the jewels first," he said. "The night I first came to your home I entered the place next door by accident. A fancy-dress party was in progress."

"Yes—I knew it. They used to be friends of Theodore's."

"So I guessed," he added dryly. "Theodore was there."

"Theodore—there?" she echoed in surprise he felt to be genuine. "Why, but—don't you remember you met him with the others in my house, soon after you came?"

"I do, perfectly. Nevertheless, I saw him in the other house, in mask, I assure you, dressed to represent Mephistopheles. Last night I found the costume in his closet, and the stairs at the rear were his, of course, to employ."

"I remember," said Dorothy excitedly, "that he came in a long gray overcoat, though the evening was distinctly warm."

"Precisely. And all of this would amount to nothing," Garrison resumed, "only that while I stood in the hall of the house I had entered, that evening, I saw a young woman, likewise in mask, wearing your necklaces—your pearls and diamonds."

Dorothy stared at him in utter bewilderment. Her face grew pale. Her eyes dilated strangely.

"You—you are sure?" she said in a tone barely audible.

"Perfectly," said Garrison.

"And you never mentioned this before?"

"I awaited developments."

"But—what did you think? You might almost have thought that Theodore had stolen them, and handed them to me," she said. "Especially after the way I put them in your charge!"

"I told you we have much to clear between us," he said. "Haven't I the right to know a little——"

"But—how did they come to be there?" she interrupted, abruptly confronted by a phase of the facts which she had momentarily overlooked. "How in the world could my jewels have been in that house and also in my bureau at the very same time?"

"Isn't it possible that Theodore borrowed them, temporarily, and smuggled them back when he came?"

The startled look was intensified in her eyes as she met his gaze.

"He must have done it in some such way!" she said. "I thought at the time, when I ran in to get them, they were not exactly as I had left them, earlier. And I gave them to you for fear he'd steal them!"

This was some light, at least. Garrison needed more.

"Why couldn't you have told me all about them earlier?"

She looked at him beseechingly. Some way, it seemed to them both they had known each other for a very long time, and much had been swept away that must have stood as a barrier between mere client and agent.

"I felt I'd rather not," she confessed. "Forgive me, please. They do not belong to me.

"Not yours?" said Garrison. "What do you mean?"

"I advanced some money on them—to some one very dear," she answered.
"Please don't probe into that, if you can help it."

His jealousy rose again, with his haunting suspicion of a man in the background with whom he would yet have to deal. He knew that here he had no rights, but in other directions he had many.

"I shall be obliged to do considerable probing," he said. "The time has come when we must work much more closely together. A maze of events has entangled us both, and together we must find our way out."

She lowered her glance. Her lip was trembling. He felt she was striving to gain a control over her nerves, that were strung to the highest tension. For fully a minute she was silent. He waited. She looked up, met his gaze for a second, and once more lowered her eyes.

"You spoke of—of something—yesterday," she faltered. "It gave me a terrible shock."

She had broached the subject of the murder.

"I was sorry—sorry for the brutal way—the thoughtless way I spoke," he said. "I hope to be forgiven."

She made no reply to his hope. Her entire stock of nerve was required to go on with the business in hand.

"You said my uncle was—murdered," she said, in a tone he strained to hear. "What makes you think of such a thing?"

"You have not before made the statement that the Hardy in Hickwood was your uncle," he reminded her.

"You must have guessed it was my uncle," she replied. "You knew it all the time."

"No, not at first. Not, in fact, till some time after I began my work on the case. I knew Mr. Hardy had been murdered before I knew anything else about him."

She was intensely white, but she was resolute.

"Who told you he was murdered?"

"No one. I discovered the evidence myself."

He felt her weaken and grow limp beside him.

"The—the evidence?" she repeated faintly. "What kind—of evidence?"

"Poison."

He was watching her keenly.

She swayed, as if to faint once more, but mastered herself by exerting the utmost of her will.

"Poison?" she repeated, as before. "But how?"

"In a box of cigars—a birthday present given to your uncle."

It was brutal—cruelly brutal—but he had to test it out without further delay.

His words acted almost with galvanic effect.

"Cigars! His birthday! My cigars!" she cried. "Jerold, you don't suspect me?"

The car was starting across the bridge. It suddenly halted in the traffic. Almost on the instant came a crash and a cry. A dainty little brougham had been crushed against another motor car in the jam and impatience on the structure. One of its wheels had lost half its spokes, that went like a parcel of toothpicks.

Garrison leaped out at once, and Dorothy followed in alarm. In the tide of vehicles, blocked by the trifling accident, a hundred persons craned their heads to see what the damage had been.

A small knot of persons quickly gathered about the damaged carriage. Garrison hastened forward, intent upon offering his services, should help in the case be required. He discovered, in the briefest time, that no great damage had been done, and that no one had been injured.

Eager to be hastening onward, he turned back to his car. Almost immediately he saw that the chauffeur's seat was empty. Dorothy had apparently stepped once more inside, to be screened from public view.

Hastily scanning the crowd about the place, Garrison failed to find his driver. He searched about impatiently, but in vain. He presently became aware of the fact that his man had, for some reason, fled and left his car.

Considerably annoyed, and aware that he should have to drive the machine himself, he returned once more to the open door of the auto, intent upon informing Dorothy of their loss.

He gazed inside the car in utter bewilderment.

Dorothy also was gone.