"I know nothing about your daughter, Dalton," Hitchin said, with his icy smile. "Will you be seated?" "No!" said the master of the house. "What the devil do you want here, if it isn't about my daughter?" "I want just five minutes conversation with you, on a matter which concerns you most vitally." Theodore Dalton closed his hairy fists. "Look here, sir," he said, with a calm of his own which was decidedly impressive. "If you're jackass enough to come in here on the morning when my daughter--_my daughter_--has disappeared--if you're clown enough to try to sell me anything----" "I'm not trying to sell you anything; I'm trying to tell you something!" Hitchin said, and there was something so very peculiar about his smile that even Theodore Dalton postponed the forcible eviction for a few minutes. "Tell me what?" "Dalton," said Hobart Hitchin, "the game is up!" "_What?_" rasped Mr. Dalton. "The boy, David Prentiss--or what remains of the boy, David Prentiss--has just been brought into your house. _And I know!_" Theodore Dalton said nothing; for a moment he could say nothing. Hitchin's teeth showed in a triumphant smile. "Murder will out!" said he. "Murder----" "_Murder!_" Theodore Dalton snarled. "What the----" "David Prentiss, who was murdered last night, has been brought here!" the palpable lunatic pursued. "Don't shout! Don't try to strike me! _Look!_" Already he had opened the brief-case; now, with a dramatic whisk, he spread the trousers on the table. And if he looked for an effect upon Dalton, the effect was there even in excess of any expectation! Theodore Dalton, after one quick downward glance, cried out queerly, thickly, far down in his throat! His eyes seemed to start from his head; his hands, going out together, snatched up the trousers and held them nearer to the window. With a jerk, Theodore Dalton turned one of the rear pockets inside out and looked swiftly at the little linen name-plate sewed therein by the tailor who had made them. The trousers dropped from his fingers and Theodore Dalton collapsed! Gray, gasping, unable to speak at first, he crumpled into the chair beside the table and stared up numbly at Hobart Hitchin, who smiled just as he had always meant to smile in the event of such a moment coming before his death. "You--you!" Dalton choked. "You say--the wearer of those trousers has been _murdered_?" "As you know," said Hobart Hitchin. "The boy----" "A boy about twenty-two, smooth shaven--a nice kid--a boy with a shock of brown hair and--and----" Theodore Dalton cried, in a queer, broken little voice, as he gripped the table. "No! No! Not that boy!" "That boy!" said Hitchin. "David Prentiss!" Dalton's whole soul seemed to burst! "It was no David Prentiss!" he cried. "My--my daughter's gone and now my only son has been murdered!" CHAPTER XIV Concerning Three Groups