Anthony Fry merely shook his head. The mood that was come upon him now passed any explanation; he was neither frightened nor excited. He heard the latest absurd accusation without even forming an opinion on it. Either he had passed the point where one may feel the sensation of astonishment or infinite desperation had blessed him with a calm past any understanding. He did not know which and he did not care; it was enough that he could look straight at Dalton and not even change color! "I have no idea what you're talking about, Dalton," he said quietly. Beatrice leaped into action. "Dalton!" she cried. "Mary Dalton's father?" "What?" Dalton, momentarily sidetracked, whirled upon her. "You've heard something from Mary, madam? You know----" "I know all about Mary!" said Beatrice Boller. "Madam!" Anthony broke in. "I forbid you to say one word of your ridiculous and unjustified----" Beatrice simply ignored his presence and favored Theodore Dalton with her unspeakable smile. "Mary Dalton passed the night in this apartment," she said quickly. "Mary----" Dalton cried, just as Robert hurried to his side and clutched his arm. "They say she was here!" he panted. "The woman says so, and Mary's hat--see! She's holding it even now! And Mary's bag is in a room there, and her comb and brush and two of her handkerchiefs and----" "But it wasn't a woman, whatever she's left!" Hobart Hitchin contributed. "It was a boy, about twenty or twenty-two--a boy Fry introduced to me as David Prentiss, and who was Dalton's son. Look! We have his trousers, and Dalton has identified them as his son's!" Dalton's attention was still upon Beatrice. "You say that--that my daughter----" "I say that she was here and that she left suddenly when I came, so suddenly that she hadn't even time to take her hat!" said Boller's charming wife. "Where she is now I don't know; not in this apartment because I've searched it; probably somewhere else in the house, because she would be unlikely to leave without a hat. But she was here, and if you doubt it, _ask those men_!" Slowly, Dalton turned back to Anthony Fry. One glance he sent down at the automatic and his finger settled over the trigger. And still the calm held Anthony. It was one of the most curious things he had ever experienced, that calm, and more curious than the calm itself was the astounding capacity for thought that had come to his tired brain. Except for this last inexplicable accusation, which he discarded, he was thinking lucidly, and swiftly and, by the way, along a single line. Mary was all that mattered just now. And to some extent, if Fate remained kind, he saw his way to saving Mary, should the girl have sense enough to remain quiet in his room. He smiled, did Anthony, and looked so confidently, so directly at Dalton that the latter scowled in bewilderment. "I know nothing whatever about your son, Dalton," said he. "I did not even know that you had a son. Are you sure he is not at home?"