What had he intended to say to her, how was he going to explain? If he had not mentioned it in his statement we never would have known, for Carol did not give him time to tell. The story was simple and in the face of her supposed ignorance of the murder, might have satisfied her. He was going to admit his duplicity in the Copper Pool—his excuse being he had done it for her. In his last interview with Barker he saw that discovery was imminent, and decided to drop out of sight. When he passed through his own office he was on his way out of the building, descending unseen by the stairs, and going immediately to Canada. When he read in the papers of the suicide, identified as Hollings Harland, no one was more surprised than he was. How the mistake had been made he readily guessed. Some months before he had discharged one of his clerks for intemperance. The man, unable to get another job and in the clutch of his vice, had gone to the dogs, applying frequently to Harland for help. The lawyer, moved to pity, had given this in the form of clothing and money. On the afternoon of January fifteenth he had visited the Harland offices, in a suit of Harland’s clothes, begging for money and threatening suicide. He was sunk to the lowest depths of degradation, for, during a few moments when he was alone in the private office, he had evidently searched among his employer’s papers and taken a watch and chain which was lying on the desk, to be sent to a jeweler’s for repairs. Startled in his hunt among the papers he had had no time to replace them and had put them in his pocket. After the man had gone Harland noticed the missing documents and jewelry but in the stress of his own affairs paid no attention to the theft. The next day when he read of the suicide, he remembered the man’s threat to kill himself and realized he had done it later that afternoon. That the body, crushed beyond recognition, had been identified through the clothes, papers and watch as himself, he regarded as a lucky chance. Without his intervention a thing had occurred which forever severed him from the life he wished to be done with. Such was Harland’s crime as explained in Harland’s statement. How we talked it over! How we mused on the slight happening that had brought it to light—a child at a window! Strange and wonderful! The hotel noises, the traffic in the street, faded into the silence of the night as we sat there, pondering, speculating, and awed too by this modern fall of Lucifer. CHAPTER XXI MOLLY ENDS THE STORY They all came back on Wednesday night, late, in the small hours. I had a wire from Babbitts—and Gosh, as I sat up waiting for him I thought I’d die right there on my own parlor carpet! For, of course, I supposed she’d tell them what I’d done and he was coming straight home to divorce me.