“Fine for you!” murmured Barrison, burying himself in a particularly potent drink. Long after Tony Clay had gone, Jim sat scowling at the cigarettes which he lighted from one another with scarcely an interval, and at the brandy and soda of which he consumed more than what he usually considered a fair allowance. Both as a man and a detective he admired Miss Templeton. He wished he had seen her handwriting and could compare it with the note which he still kept put away in a locked cabinet where he cached his special treasures. He wondered if—— But her suggestion as to Kitty Legaye, inspired by jealousy as it was, was not without value. On the face of it, it seemed far-fetched, or would have to a less seasoned experience; but Jim Barrison had forgotten what it was to feel surprise at anything. Stranger things—much, much stranger things—had turned out to be quite ordinary and natural occurrences. There are, as Barrison knew, many varieties of the female of the species; he had come up against a goodly number of them, and could guess what the different sorts would do in given extremities. And he knew that in the whole wild lot there is none wilder, none more secret, none more relentless, none more unexpected and inexplicable, than she who has counted on snatching respectability and domesticity at the eleventh hour and been disappointed. If Kitty Legaye had really expected to marry Alan Mortimer, and if he was getting ready to throw her over for a perfectly new, strange young girl, then one need not be astonished at anything. Yet, little Miss Legaye seemed a steady bit of humanity, not emotional or hysterical in the least. “Oh, hang it all!” he muttered resentfully, as he turned out his light at least two hours later than was his habit. “I wish women had never learned to write—or to talk! It would simplify life greatly.” Then he fell asleep and dreamed queer dreams in which Grace Templeton, Kitty Legaye and Sybil Merivale chased each other round and round, quarreling for possession of the anonymous note which for some reason the old man Wrenn was holding high above his head in the center of the group. As the three women chased each other in the dream, Jim grew dizzier and dizzier, and finally woke up abruptly, feeling breathless and bewildered, with Tara, the Jap, standing beside him. “Honorable sir did having extreme bad dreams!” explained Tara, with some severity of manner. Barrison answered meekly and lay down again to fall only half asleep this time and toss restlessly until morning. He kept his word to Dukane and attended rehearsals with religious regularity, though what technical use he had was exhausted after a few days. He found himself becoming more and more interested in the play—or, rather, in the actors who were appearing in it. Their personalities became more and more vivid to him; their relations more and more complex.