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wear that a man would use only on dress occasions. What had become of the street shoes that you would expect to find in the closet? My course of reasoning was simple. After Endicott had dressed for the wedding, something had occurred which forced him to change back to his heavier boots. What? The knowledge, of course, that he was about to leave the house on a rough trip. We now have the conclusion that he vanished of his own volition, that he knew where and why he was going, and that he made certain plans for leaving.

"It was the next point which I found the most baffling—and which led me into my first error." Madelyn came to a pause by the rug of Peter the Great. The dog rose, yawning, to his feet and thrust his nose into her hand.

"Perhaps you are wondering, Mr. Van Sutton, why I locked myself into the room after you and Miss Noraker had left? Frankly, I was not satisfied with my investigation—and I wanted to be alone. For instance, there was an object on Mr. Endicott's dressing table that puzzled me greatly. Under ordinary circumstances I might not have noticed it. It was the second tray of ashes.

"They were not tobacco ashes. It didn't need a second glance to tell me that they had come from a wood fire. Certainly there had not been a wood fire in that room—and, if there had been, why the