“Has Mr. Bailey gone back to the city,” I demanded, “or to the club?” “Neither,” defiantly; “at the present moment I do not know where he is.” “Halsey,” I asked gravely, leaning forward, “have you the slightest suspicion who killed Arnold Armstrong? The police think he was admitted from within, and that he was shot down from above, by someone on the circular staircase.” “I know nothing of it,” he maintained; but I fancied I caught a sudden glance at Gertrude, a flash of something that died as it came. As quietly, as calmly as I could, I went over the whole story, from the night Liddy and I had been alone up to the strange experience of Rosie and her pursuer. The basket still stood on the table, a mute witness to this last mystifying occurrence. “There is something else,” I said hesitatingly, at the last. “Halsey, I have never told this even to Gertrude, but the morning after the crime, I found, in a tulip bed, a revolver. It—it was yours, Halsey.” For an appreciable moment Halsey stared at me. Then he turned to Gertrude. “My revolver, Trude!” he exclaimed. “Why, Jack took my revolver with him, didn’t he?” “Oh, for Heaven’s sake don’t say that,” I implored. “The detective thinks possibly Jack Bailey came back, and—and the thing happened then.” “He didn’t come back,” Halsey said sternly. “Gertrude, when you brought down a revolver that night for Jack to take with him, what one did you bring? Mine?” Gertrude was defiant now. “No. Yours was loaded, and I was afraid of what Jack might do. I gave him one I have had for a year or two. It was empty.” Halsey threw up both hands despairingly. “If that isn’t like a girl!” he said. “Why didn’t you do what I asked you to, Gertrude? You send Bailey off with an empty gun, and throw mine in a tulip bed, of all places on earth! Mine was a thirty-eight caliber. The inquest will show, of course, that the bullet that killed Armstrong was a thirty-eight. Then where shall I be?” “You forget,” I broke in, “that I have the revolver, and that no one knows about it.” But Gertrude had risen angrily. “I can not stand it; it is always with me,” she cried. “Halsey, I did not throw your revolver into the tulip bed. I—think—you—did it—yourself!” They stared at each other across the big library table, with young eyes all at once hard, suspicious. And then Gertrude held out both hands to him appealingly. “We must not,” she said brokenly. “Just now, with so much at stake, it—is shameful. I know you are as ignorant as I am. Make me believe it, Halsey.”