"In as much as you don't know where I was or what I've been doing, it will not compromise you if I say that I found a thirty-eight calibre revolver with three empty shells in the cylinder. I also found a theatrical make-up box, with grease paints, gauze, and all that. Also currency amounting to about three hundred dollars. Nothing incriminating, nothing actually crooked. Simply circumstantial as relating to recent events in your midst, Mr. Webster." "Makes it look mighty certain that he was the feller with the mask, don't it? Only three shots were fired, you know. I've been thinking a lot about what you said awhile ago. You don't think that he had anything to do with--with putting the Vick girl out of the way? You spoke about him being mistaken in the woman." "He had nothing to do with it, Webster. I told you I saw a figure in the pasture after he had gone into the house. If it was the Vick girl, she was certainly alive then. He went straight home after leaving that house. He didn't go out of the Tavern again last night, that's positive. Now, what I want to find out is this: was the girl in love with him? Was there anything between them? If she's at the bottom of the river down there, it's a plain case of suicide, my friend, and people do not take their own lives unless there's a mighty good reason. With a young girl it's usually a case of unrequited love,--or worse. According to that letter Miss Miller had from New York, Thane is not above betraying a girl. Of course, if the Vick girl is dead and left nothing behind to implicate Thane, it will be out of the question to charge him with being even indirectly responsible for her death." "The main thing," said Charlie, who had turned a shade paler during this matter-of-fact, cold-blooded analysis, "is to keep Alix Crown from falling into his clutches. He's a bad egg, that feller is, and he's made up his mind to win her by fair means or foul." "Well, if she falls for him after reading that lawyer's letter and when she hears what I believe to be the truth about that heroic episode the other night,--why, she ought to get what's coming to her, that's all I have to say," said Mr. Gilfillan flatly. "I've discovered one thing, Mr. Webster. If a woman makes up her mind to marry a man, hell-fire and brimstone can't stop her. The older I get and the more I see of women, the more I am convinced that vice is its own reward. I guess we'd better stroll down to the river and see what's doing." "I've been thinking," said Charlie as they walked along, "that if Thane wasn't in the British Army and wasn't in our army, then he must be a slacker and wanted by the government for--"