“It’s at least curious,” observed Colton thoughtfully, “that the juggler’s shrinking from some aerial terror should so correspond with a murder in mid-air.” “You’re becoming pretty imaginative,” retorted the other disagreeably. “This crazy Whalley stabbed Petersen aboard the ship. What his motive was, or how he got away with it, or why the others don’t give him away, is beyond me. But he did the job, and this bogy-man scare of his is the weak cunning of a disordered mind to divert suspicion. Circumstantial evidence to the contrary, that’s what’s what!” Then, with his quick change of tone: “Princess! Oh, Princess!” “What is it, Petit Père?” said the girl. “Will you come along home with us?” “Right away. We don’t always welcome our guests with so much excitement, Dr. Colton,” she added, as she slipped her arm through Haynes’. After a moment’s pause she asked him: “Do you think Paul Serdholm knows anything of the—the murder?” “Why?” “Because he thinks you believe he does. And he’s ugly about it. Do watch him, Petit Père. He doesn’t like you, you know.” “Ah,” said Haynes as the three set out across the billowy grass-land. “Perhaps he’ll bear a little watching.” They walked in silence, home. Once Helga stopped short on a hill-top and turned her face toward the sea, listening intently, but almost immediately shook her head. Dick Colton got to bed just before dawn, with a mind divided in speculation between the mystery of the dead man and the more personal mystery of a small, wadded treasure in his pocket. CHAPTER FIVE THE CRY IN THE DUSK MONTAUK POINT rises and falls like a procession of mighty swells fixed in eternal quietude and grown over with the most luxurious of grasses and field-blooms. One walks from hill to hill, passing between the down-curving slopes to hollows wherein flourish all-but-impenetrable thickets of the stunted scrub-oak, and abruptly walks forth upon a noble cliff-line overlooking the limitless ocean to the far-off southern horizon. Steep and narrow gullies at intervals give rock-studded access to the beach. Outside of the miniature forests in the hollows there is no tree-growth on the whole forty square miles of land, excepting the deep-shaded tangle of the Hither Wood on the far northwest, into which none makes his way except an occasional sportsman on a coon hunt. Except for the lighthouse family at the eastern tip, the three life-saving stations with their attendant houses, and a little huddle of fisher-huts on a reach of the Sound, there were no habitants in the mid-September of 1902, the few summer cottagers having fled the sharpened air. All day long the pasturing sheep of the interior might rove without the alarm of a single human. Short of the prairies, a lonelier stretch of land would be difficult of discovery.