“It’s puzzlin’—that’s what it is, puzzlin’,” he declared, throwing himself astride of a chair. “I’ve raked that old garage fore and aft, but I can’t track down the startings of that fire. You see, the place is stucco and all that, and besides the discipline of this whole layout is along the lines of p’ison neatness! Everybody that works at Sycamore Ridge has to be a very old maid for keeping things clean! So, there’s no chance for accumulated rubbish or old rags or spontaneous combustion or anything of the sort. Nextly, none of the three men who have any call to go into the garage ever smoke in there. That’s a Mede and Persian law. Gee, Mr. Wheeler is some efficient boss! Well, anyway, after the fire, though they tried every way to find out what started it, they couldn’t find a thing! There was no explanation but a brand dropped from the skies, or a stroke of lightning! And there was no storm on. It wouldn’t all be so sure, but the morning after, it seems, Mr. Allen and Mr. Keefe were doin’ some sleuthin’ on their own, and they couldn’t find out how the fire started. So, they put it up to the garage men, and they hunted, too. It seems nothing was burnt but some things in Mr. Appleby’s car, which, of course, lets out his chauffeur, who had no call to burn up his own duds. And a coat of his was burned and also a coat of Mr. Keefe’s.” “What were those coats doing in an unused car?” asked Stone. “Oh, they were extra motor coats, or raincoats, or something like that, and they always staid in the car.” “Where, in the car?” “I asked that,” Fibsy returned, “and they were hanging on the coat-rail. I thought there might have been matches in the pockets, but they say no. There never had been matches in those coat pockets, nor any matches in the Appleby car, for that matter.” “Well, the fire is pretty well mixed up in the murder,” declared Stone. “Now it’s up to us to find out how.” “Ex-cuse me, Mr. Stone,” and Burdon shook his head; “you’ll never get at it that way.” “Ex-cuse me, Mr. Burdon,” Fibsy flared back, “Mr. Stone _will_ get at it that way, if he thinks that’s the way to look. You don’t know F. Stone yet——” “Hush up, Fibs; Mr. Burdon will know if I succeed, and, perhaps he’s right as to the unimportance of the fire, after all.” “You see,” Burdon went on, unabashed, “Mr. Keefe—now, he’s some smart in the detective line—he said, find your phantom bugler, and you’ve got your murderer! Now, what nonsense that is! As if a marauding villain would announce himself by playing on a bugle!” “Yet there may be something in it,” demurred Stone. “It may well be that the dramatic mind that staged this whole mysterious affair is responsible for the bugle call, the fire, and the final crime.”