“Better leave them up.”  Mr. Holcombe said.  “It sends the blood back to the head.  Half the damfool people in the world stick a pillow under a fainting woman’s shoulders.  How are you now?”

“All right,” I said feebly.  “I thought you were Mr. Ladley.”

He helped me up, and I sat in a chair and tried to keep my lips from shaking.  And then I saw that Mr. Holcombe had brought a suit case with him, and had set it inside the door.

“Ladley is safe, until he gets bail, anyhow,” he said.  “They picked him up as he was boarding a Pennsylvania train bound east.”

“For murder?” I asked.

“As a suspicious character,” he replied grimly.  “That does as well as anything for a time.”  He sat down opposite me, and looked at me intently.

“Mrs. Pitman,” he said, “did you ever hear the story of the horse that wandered out of a village and could not be found?”

I shook my head.

“Well, the best wit of the village failed to locate the horse.  But one day the village idiot walked into town, leading the missing animal by the bridle.  When they asked him how he had done it, he said:  ’Well, I just thought what I’d do if I was a horse, and then I went and did it.’”

“I see,” I said, humoring him.

“You don’t see.  Now, what are we trying to do?”

“We’re trying to find a body.  Do you intend to become a corpse?”

He leaned over and tapped on the table between us.  “We are trying to prove a crime.  I intend for the time to be the criminal.”

He looked so curious, bent forward and glaring at me from under his bushy eyebrows, with his shoes on his knee—­for he had taken them off to wade to the stairs—­and his trousers rolled to his knees, that I wondered if he was entirely sane.  But Mr. Holcombe, eccentric as he might be, was sane enough.

“Not really a criminal!”

“As really as lies in me.  Listen, Mrs. Pitman.  I want to put myself in Ladley’s place for a day or two, live as he lived, do what he did, even think as he thought, if I can.  I am going to sleep in his room to-night, with your permission.”

I could not see any reason for objecting, although I thought it silly and useless.  I led the way to the front room, Mr. Holcombe following with his shoes and suit case.  I lighted a lamp, and he stood looking around him.

“I see you have been here since we left this afternoon,” he said.

“Twice,” I replied.  “First with Mr. Graves, and later—­”

The words died on my tongue.  Some one had been in the room since my last visit there.

“He has been here!” I gasped.  “I left the room in tolerable order.  Look at it!”

“When were you here last?”

“At seven-thirty, or thereabouts.”

“Where were you between seven-thirty and eight-thirty?”

“In the kitchen with Peter.”  I told him then about the dog, and about finding him shut in the room.