“What a wonder the man is!” exclaimed Denning with enthusiasm.  “Sick as he is, and with all these other troubles on him, he’s bucked up and buffaloed this whole thing into shape.  He forgets nothing!”

Gard entered the motor first, and, as he leaned forward, dropped from the opposite window a fragment of twisted gold.  An hour later, in the waiting room they had traversed, a woman picked up a pigeon blood ruby, but the grinding wheels of trains and engines had left no trace of the trifles they had destroyed.  In the yard near the private siding, a coupling hand came upon a twisted gold watch case, so crushed that the diamond monogram it once had boasted was unrecognizable.

“At every stop, Jim,” said Gard, as he threw himself wearily into a lounging chair in the saloon end of the car, “I want you to go out and get me all the latest editions of the New York papers.”

The negro bowed, disappeared into the cook’s galley and returned with glasses and a bottle of champagne.  He poured a glass, which Gard drank gratefully.

Gard heard Langley and Denning moving about their stateroom.  The noise of the terminal rang an iron chorus, accompanied by whistles and the hiss of escaping steam.  The private car was attached to the express, and the return journey began.  His irritated nerves would have set him tramping pantherwise, but sheer weariness kept him in his chair.  Presently his fellow travelers joined him, but he took little or no heed of their conversation.  Once he drank again, a toast to the successful issue of their combined efforts.  He lay back, striving to control his rising anxiety.  What would the story be that would greet him from the heavy leads of the newspapers?

“Baltimore—­Baltimore—­Baltimore”—­the wheels seemed to pound the name from the steel rails; the car rocked to it.  By the time they reached that city the New York afternoon editions would have been distributed.  At last they glided up to the station and the porter swung off into the waiting room.  Gard rose and stood waiting, chewing savagely on his unlighted cigar.

“It’s Mahr,” he apologized to Denning.  “I want to learn the facts.”  His hand shook as he snatched the smudgy sheets from the negro.

In big letters across the front page he caught the headline: 

    MURDER OF VICTOR MAHR

    FAMOUS CLUBMAN AND FINANCIER
    STABBED TO DEATH IN HIS OWN LIBRARY

    EVIDENCE OF ROBBERY

    WOMAN SUSPECTED OF THE CRIME

“Stabbed to death ...  Woman suspected.”  His brain reeled.  How “stabbed to death”?  He himself had seen—­“Woman suspected.”  Then all his despairing efforts to save her had been in vain!  The train, starting suddenly, gave him ample excuse to clutch the back of the chair for support, and to fall heavily upon its cushions.  He could not have held himself upright another moment.  An absurd scheme flashed through his brain.  He would, if necessary, take the blame upon himself—­anything to shield her.  He would say they had quarreled over the Vandyke.