"The antique Panhard fits in all right," said O'Dowd, "but I'm hanged if the woman fits at all. No such person arrived at Green Fancy last night." "Did you get a square look at the driver's face?" demanded De Soto. "It was almost too dark to see, but he was old, hatchet-faced, and spoke with an accent." "Then it couldn't have been Peter," said De Soto positively. "He's old, right enough, but he is as big as the side of a house, with a face like a full moon, and he is Yankee to his toes. By gad, Barnes, the plot thickens! A woman has been added to the mystery. Now, who the devil is she and what has become of her?" CHAPTER VI CHARITY BEGINS FAR FROM HOME, AND A STROLL IN THE WILDWOOD FOLLOWS Mr. Rushcroft as furious when he arose at eleven o'clock on the morning after the double murder, having slept like a top through all of the commotion. He boomed all over the place, vocal castigations falling right and left on the guilty and the innocent without distinction. He wouldn't have missed the excitement for anything in the world. He didn't mind missing the breakfast he was to have had with Barnes, but he did feel outraged over the pusillanimous trick played upon him by the remaining members of his troupe. Nothing was to have been expected of Putnam Jones and his damnation crew; they wouldn't have called him if the house was afire; they would let him roast to death; but certainly something was due him from the members of his company, something better than utter abandonment! He was still deep in the sulks when he came upon Barnes, who was pacing the sunlit porch, deep in thought. "There will never be another opportunity like that," he groaned, at the close of a ten minute dissertation on the treachery of friends; "never in all the years to come. The driveling fools! What do I pay them for? To let me lie there snoring so loud that I couldn't hear opportunity for the noise I was making? As in everything else I undertake, my dear Barnes, I excel at snoring. My lung capacity is something amazing. It has to have an outlet. They let me lie there like a log while the richest publicity material that ever fell to the lot of an actor went to waste,--utter waste. Why, damme, sir, I could have made that scene in the tap-room historic; I could have made it so dramatic that it would have thrilled to the marrow every man, woman and child in the United States of America. That's what I mean. They allowed a chance like that to get away. Can you beat it? Tragedy at my very elbow,--by gad, almost nudging me, you might say,--and no one to tell me to get up. Think of the awful requiem I could have--But what's the use thinking about it now? I am so exasperated I can't think of anything but anathemas, so--" "I don't see how you managed to sleep through it," Barnes broke in. "You must have an unusually clear conscience, Mr. Rushcroft."