"Murder?" The mere naked word seemed to shock Vandeman. His sort clothe and pad everything--even their speech. "I didn't know any one entertained the idea your father was murdered. He couldn't have been--not the way it happened." "Nevertheless we think he was." "Oh, but Boyne--start a thing like that, and think of the talk it'll make! They'll commence at once saying that there was nobody but Worth to profit by his father's death." "Don't worry, Mr. Vandeman." He made me hot. "We know where to dig up the motive for the crime." "You mean the diaries?" Worth's voice sounded unbelievably from beside me. "Nothing doing there, Jerry. I've burned them." I sat and choked down the swears. Yet, looking back on it, I saw plainly that Jerry Boyne was the man who deserved kicking. I ought never to have left them with him. "You read them and burned them?" said Vandeman. "Burned them without reading," Worth's impatient tones corrected. "Without reading!" the other echoed, startled. Then, after a long pause, "Oh--I say--pardon me, but--but ought that to have been done? Surely not. Worth--if you'd read your father's diaries for the past few years--I don't believe you'd have a doubt that he committed suicide--not a doubt." Worth sat there mute. Myself, I was rather curious as to what Vandeman would say; I had read much in those diaries. But when it came, it was the same old line of talk one hears when there's a suicide: Gilbert was a lonely man; his life hadn't been happy; he cut himself off from people too much. Vandeman said that of late he believed he was pretty nearly the only intimate the dead man had. This last gave him an interest in my eyes. I broke in on his generalities to ask him bluntly why he was so certain the death was suicide. "Mr. Gilbert was breaking up; had been for two years or more. Worth's been away; he's not seen it; but I can tell you, Boyne, his father's mind was affected." Worth let that pass, though I could see he wasn't convinced by Vandeman's sentimentalities, any more than I was. After the man had gone, I turned on Worth sharply, with, "Why the devil did you tell that pink-tea proposition about your dealings with the Van Ness Avenue bank?" "Safety valve, I guess. I get up too heavy a load of steam, and it's easy to blow it off to Vandeman. Told him most of it in the smoker, coming up. You'll talk about anything in a smoker." "Oh, will you?" I said in exasperation. "And you'll burn anything, I suppose, that a match'll set fire to?" "Go easy, Jerry Boyne." His chin dropped to his chest, he sat glowering out through the window. "Cleansing fires for that sort of garbage," he said finally. "I burned them on the day of his funeral." CHAPTER XVIII THE TORN PAGE My coming had thrown dinner late; we were barely through with the meal and back once more in the living room when the latch of the French window rattled, the window itself was pushed open, and a high imperious voice proclaimed,