“And now,” he said. “I think a little drink won't do us any harm.” Dick refused to drink. He was endeavoring to comprehend the situation; to realize that Gregory, who had faced him with such sneering hate a day or so before, was his half-brother. “Poor devil!” he said at last. “I wish to God I'd known. He was right, you know. No wonder--” Sometime later he roused from deep study and looked at Bassett. “How did you get the connection?” “I saw Melis, and learned that Hines was in it somehow. He was the connecting link between Beverly Carlysle and the Thorwald woman. But I couldn't connect him with Beverly herself, except by a chance. I wired a man I knew in Omaha, and he turned up the second marriage, and a daughter known on the stage as Beverly Carlysle.” Bassett was in high spirits. He moved about the room immensely pleased with himself, slightly boastful. “Some little stroke, Dick!” he said. “What price Mr. Judson Clark to-night, eh? It will be worth a million dollars to see Wilkins' face when he reads that thing.” “There's no mention of me as Livingstone in it, is there?” “It wasn't necessary to go into that. I didn't know--Look here,” he exploded, “you're not going to be a damned fool, are you?” “I'm not going to revive Judson Clark, Bassett. I don't owe him anything. Let him die a decent death and stay dead.” “Oh, piffle!” Bassett groaned. “Don't start that all over again. Don't pull any Enoch Arden stuff on me, looking in at a lighted window and wandering off to drive a taxicab.” Suddenly Dick laughed. Bassett watched him, puzzled and angry, with a sort of savage tenderness. “You're crazy,” he said morosely. “Darned if I understand you. Here I've got everything fixed as slick as a whistle, and it took work, believe me. And now you say you're going to chuck the whole thing.” “Not at all,” Dick replied, with a new ring in his voice. “You're right. I've been ten sorts of a fool, but I know now what I'm going to do. Take your paper, old friend, and for my sake go out and clear Jud Clark. Put up a headstone to him, if you like, a good one. I'll buy it.” “And what will you be doing in the meantime?” Dick stretched and threw out his arms. “Me?” he said. “What should I be doing, old man? I'm going home.” XLV Lucy Crosby was dead. One moment she was of the quick, moving about the house, glancing in at David, having Minnie in the kitchen pin and unpin her veil; and the next she was still and infinitely mysterious, on her white bed. She had fallen outside the door of David's room, and lay there, her arms still full of fresh bath towels, and a fixed and intense look in her eyes, as though, outside the door, she had come face to face with a messenger who bore surprising news. Doctor Reynolds, running up the stairs, found her there dead, and closed the door into David's room.