"Somebody in this apartment wrote those notes, all right," Farland mused. "But why? That's the question I want answered, and I'll have to be careful how I start in to find out. You can't bluff that girl; one look is enough to tell me that. If I jump her about those notes, she'll probably get wise and cover her tracks, and then I'll be strictly up against it." He found nothing else of importance in the apartment. There were some letters, but they seemed to be from relatives scattered throughout the country, ordinary letters dealing with family affairs of no particular consequence, and they told Jim Farland nothing that he wished to know. But Kate Gilbert was only one angle of the case, he reminded himself, and so he decided that he was done for the present as far as she was concerned. It would be only a waste of valuable time, he thought, to remain longer in the Gilbert apartment; and there were plenty of other things for him to be doing. Farland went all over the apartment once more, making sure that he was leaving everything in its proper place, that there would be nothing to show that anybody had been making an investigation there. Then he hurried out and locked the door, returned the keys to the old janitor, gave him another bill and instructed him to forget the visit, lighted a black cigar, and started walking rapidly southward. When the proper time arrived, Jim Farland would tell Miss Kate Gilbert that he knew she had written the anonymous notes to Sidney Prale--or that her maid had--and he would ask her why. He reached Columbus Circle, made his way over to Fifth Avenue, and continued his walk down that broad thoroughfare. Farland had decided to go to the hotel and have a talk with Sidney Prale and Murk. He told himself that he was going to like Murk, the human hulk who suddenly had become of some use in the world. But he did not get a chance to go to the hotel just then. He came to a busy corner, and stopped to wait for a chance to cross the street congested with traffic. Suddenly, a few feet to his right, he saw Kate Gilbert, who had left her apartment only a short time before. There was nothing startling in that fact alone, for this was a district where there were fashionable shops and beauty parlors, and well-dressed women were on every side. What interested Detective Jim Farland the most was that Kate Gilbert was standing before the show window of a fashionable shop in intimate conversation with George Lerton, Sidney Prale's cousin! CHAPTER XII BATTERED KEYS Farland started moving slowly toward them, making his way through the crowd in such fashion that he did not attract too much attention to himself. He was feeling a sudden interest in this case. There were great possibilities in the fact that two persons connected with it from different angles were in conversation.