Barrison hung up, and tramped downstairs with suppressed profanity on his tongue, to let Tony in at the front door of the apartment house where he roomed. The younger man was already waiting on the steps, dripping wet, but whistling softly, rather off the key. “Come in, you blamed night owl!” growled Barrison, under his breath. “Don’t slam the door. And if you haven’t something worth while to tell me, after routing me out like this, I’ll wake Tara and give him full permission to jujutsu you into Bellevue! Come on, and stop whistling.” Upstairs, Tony demanded Scotch and cigarettes, and took off his wet coat. “Heavens! Does that mean you’re intending to _stay_?” “Not permanently,” Tony reassured him soothingly. “I do manage to arrive at inconvenient times, don’t I?” “You do, you do! Now what is it?” “Well,” said Tony, settling himself in the chair recently vacated by Willie Coster. “I’ve been calling on Miss Templeton.” Barrison was conscious of a queer little thrill, not entirely unpleasant. Truth to tell, he had not been able to dismiss a certain vision from his mind, through all his practice and professional occupations. He could see it now, all in a moment, gold hair, dark-fringed eyes, marble-white throat and arms, and a mouth that could soften and droop like a child’s at the most unexpected moments. “She’s out of the case, I suppose you know,” he said shortly. “Go ahead, though.” “You see,” said Tony, “when you pitched into me like that about her giving me the slip, I was sort of sore, but I knew you were right, too. So I gave you the slip, in my turn, and chased over to her hotel. I wasn’t at all sure she’d see me, but I thought I’d try it on anyhow, and she sent down word I was to come up. She wore a kimono thing, and looked like an angel——” He paused in fatuous reflection. “Get on, you young fool!” Barrison’s tone was the sharper because he himself admired Miss Templeton rather more than was wholly consistent with the traditions of a cold-blooded detective. So Tony went on: “She seemed to know that there had been something wrong at the theater; that impressed me at once. The moment I came into the room, she said: ‘Something has happened to him?’ I told her about it, and she just sat for a moment or two looking straight in front of her. She looked—strange, and awfully white and tired and—sort of young. After a while she said: ‘Thank Heaven it wasn’t I’—just that way. Then she asked some questions——” “What sort of questions?” interrupted Barrison, who was looking at the floor, and had let his cigarette go out. “Oh, the usual thing: Who was behind at the time, and whether any one was suspected, and—she made rather a point of this—where Miss Legaye was when it happened.” “I know; she’s always harped on that.” Barrison frowned impatiently, yet he was thinking as hard as he knew how to think. “Anything else, Tony?” “Yes; she asked me to give you this.”