As we sped along I quieted down and began to think—going over what he’d said, connecting things up. And as I thought, bouncing round in that empty vehicle like one small pea in a pod that was too big, I saw it plainer and plainer, as if one veil after another was being lifted. Harland was in love with her—she’d not gone down in the elevator—she’d stayed there! she’d been there! She’d— We went over a chuck hole and I bounced up nearly to the roof, but the smothered cry that came from me wasn’t because of that. It was because I _saw_—the whole thing was as clear as daylight. _She’d_ been the lure that brought him to the Azalea Woods Estates, _she’d_ been the person that kept him in the front office while Barker came down from the story above! CHAPTER XI JACK TELLS THE STORY The account of Molly’s dinner with Tony Ford was given Sunday morning by Molly herself to George and the chief in the Whitney home. I went there in the afternoon—dread of possible developments drew me like a magnet—and heard the news. It was more ominous than even I, steeled and primed for ill tidings, had expected. I didn’t say much. There was no use in showing my disbelief; besides if they suspected its strength there was a possibility of their confidence being withheld from me. I had to hear everything, be familiar with every strand in the net they were weaving round the woman of whose guilt they were now certain. George was going to call somewhere on Fifth Avenue, and I walked up with him, for the pleasure of his company he supposed, in reality to hear in detail how he and the chief had pieced into logical sequence the broken bits of information. "Roughly speaking," he said, "it’s this way: Barker was the brains of the combination, Ford and Miss Whitehall the instruments he used. Ford did the killing and was paid. Miss Whitehall’s part, which was puzzling before, is now clear. She takes her place as The Woman in the Case, the spider that decoyed the fly into the web." He paused for me to answer, but I could say nothing. "It was one of the most ingenious plots I’ve ever come up against. A master mind conceived it and must have been days perfecting it. Think of the skill with which every detail was developed, and those two alibis—Ford’s and Barker’s. How carefully they were carried out. That afternoon visit of Harland to Miss Whitehall was planned. Barker followed it and heard that all was ready—the trap set and the quarry coming. Then he went up to the floor above establishing his presence there, and knowing, when Harland left, that the girl was waiting below to meet and hold him in the front room.