"Tut, tut! You want nothing of the sort." "Mrs. Pitman," she said, "I sent for you because I'm nearly crazy. Mr. Howell was a friend of that woman. He has acted like a maniac since she disappeared. He doesn't come to see me, he has given up his work on the paper, and I saw him to-day on the street--he looks like a ghost." That put me to thinking. "He might have been a friend," I admitted. "Although, as far as I know, he was never at the house but once, and then he saw both of them." "When was that?" "Sunday morning, the day before she disappeared. They were arguing something." She was looking at me attentively. "You know more than you are telling me, Mrs. Pitman," she said. "You--do you think Jennie Brice is dead, and that Mr. Howell knows--who did it?" "I think she is dead, and I think possibly Mr. Howell suspects who did it. He does not _know_, or he would have told the police." "You do not think he was--was in love with Jennie Brice, do you?" "I'm certain of that," I said. "He is very much in love with a foolish girl, who ought to have more faith in him than she has." [Illustration: She sat up in bed suddenly.] She colored a little, and smiled at that, but the next moment she was sitting forward, tense and questioning again. "If that is true, Mrs. Pitman," she said, "who was the veiled woman he met that Monday morning at daylight, and took across the bridge to Pittsburgh? I believe it was Jennie Brice. If it was not, who was it?" "I don't believe he took any woman across the bridge at that hour. Who says he did?" "Uncle Jim saw him. He had been playing cards all night at one of the clubs, and was walking home. He says he met Mr. Howell face to face, and spoke to him. The woman was tall and veiled. Uncle Jim sent for him, a day or two later, and he refused to explain. Then they forbade him the house. Mama objected to him, anyhow, and he only came on sufferance. He is a college man of good family, but without any money at all save what he earns.. And now--" I had had some young newspaper men with me, and I knew what they got. They were nice boys, but they made fifteen dollars a week. I'm afraid I smiled a little as I looked around the room, with its gray grass-cloth walls, its toilet-table spread with ivory and gold, and the maid in attendance in her black dress and white apron, collar and cuffs. Even the little nightgown Lida was wearing would have taken a week's salary or more. She saw my smile. "It was to be his chance," she said. "If he made good, he was to have something better. My Uncle Jim owns the paper, and he promised me to help him. But--" So Jim was running a newspaper! That was a curious career for Jim to choose. Jim, who was twice expelled from school, and who could never write a letter without a dictionary beside him! I had a pang when I heard his name again, after all the years. For I had written to Jim from Oklahoma, after Mr. Pitman died, asking for money to bury him, and had never even had a reply.