"I think I'll send my card up to him, Jack," I said to Parton, when we had returned to the hotel, "just to ask how he is. Wouldn't you?" "No!" snapped Parton. "But then I'm not you. You can do as you please. Don't let me influence you against him--if he's to your taste." "He isn't at all to my taste," I retorted. "I don't care for him particularly, but it seems to me courtesy requires that we show a little interest in his welfare." "Be courteous, then, and show your interest," said Parton. "I don't care as long as I am not dragged into it." I sent my card up by the boy, who, returning in a moment, said that the door was locked, adding that when he had knocked upon it there came no answer, from which he presumed that Mr. Barker had gone to sleep. "He seemed all right when you took his supper to his room?" I queried. "He said he wouldn't have any supper. Just wanted to be left alone," said the boy. "Sulking over the knife still, I imagine," sneered Parton; and then he and I retired to our room and prepared for bed. I do not suppose I had slept for more than an hour when I was awakened by Parton, who was pacing the floor like a caged tiger, his eyes all ablaze, and laboring under an intense nervous excitement. "What's the matter, Jack?" I asked, sitting up in bed. "That d--ned Barker has upset my nerves," he replied. "I can't get him out of my mind." "Oh, pshaw!" I replied. "Don't be silly. Forget him." "Silly?" he retorted, angrily. "Silly? Forget him? Hang it, I would forget him if he'd let me--but he won't." "What has he got to do with it?" "More than is decent," ejaculated Parton. "More than is decent. He has just been peering in through that window there, and he means no good." "Why, you're mad," I remonstrated. "He couldn't peer in at the window--we are on the fourth floor, and there is no possible way in which he could reach the window, much less peer in at it." "Nevertheless," insisted Parton, "Carleton Barker for ten minutes previous to your waking was peering in at me through that window there, and in his glance was that same malignant, hateful quality that so set me against him to-day--and another thing, Bob," added Parton, stopping his nervous walk for a moment and shaking his finger impressively at me--"another thing which I did not tell you before because I thought it would fill you with that same awful dread that has come to me since meeting Barker--the blood from that man's arm, the blood that stained his shirt-sleeve crimson, that besmeared his clothes, spurted out upon my cuff and coat-sleeve when I strove to stanch its flow!" "Yes, I remember that," said I. "And now look at my cuff and sleeve!" whispered Parton, his face grown white. I looked. There was no stain of any sort whatsoever upon either! Certainly there must have been something wrong about Carleton Barker. II