“Another circle!” I exclaimed.  “Then we are just where we started.”

“Not so bad as that, Miss Innes,” Riggs said eagerly.  “Nina Carrington came from the town in California where Mr. Armstrong died.  Why was the doctor so afraid of her?  The Carrington woman knew something.  I lived with Doctor Walker seven years, and I know him well.  There are few things he is afraid of.  I think he killed Mr. Armstrong out in the west somewhere, that’s what I think.  What else he did I don’t know—­but he dismissed me and pretty nearly throttled me—­for telling Mr. Jamieson here about Mr. Innes’ having been at his office the night he disappeared, and about my hearing them quarreling.”

“What was it Warner overheard the woman say to Mr. Innes, in the library?” the detective asked me.

“She said `I knew there was something wrong from the start.  A man isn’t well one day and dead the next without some reason.’”

How perfectly it all seemed to fit!

CHAPTER XXX

WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN

It was on Wednesday Riggs told us the story of his connection with some incidents that had been previously unexplained.  Halsey had been gone since the Friday night before, and with the passage of each day I felt that his chances were lessening.  I knew well enough that he might be carried thousands of miles in the box-car, locked in, perhaps, without water or food.  I had read of cases where bodies had been found locked in cars on isolated sidings in the west, and my spirits went down with every hour.

His recovery was destined to be almost as sudden as his disappearance, and was due directly to the tramp Alex had brought to Sunnyside.  It seems the man was grateful for his release, and when he learned some thing of Halsey’s whereabouts from another member of his fraternity—­for it is a fraternity—­he was prompt in letting us know.

On Wednesday evening Mr. Jamieson, who had been down at the Armstrong house trying to see Louise—­and failing—­was met near the gate at Sunnyside by an individual precisely as repulsive and unkempt as the one Alex had captured.  The man knew the detective, and he gave him a piece of dirty paper, on which was scrawled the words—­“He’s at City Hospital, Johnsville.”  The tramp who brought the paper pretended to know nothing, except this:  the paper had been passed along from a “hobo” in Johnsville, who seemed to know the information would be valuable to us.

Again the long distance telephone came into requisition.  Mr. Jamieson called the hospital, while we crowded around him.  And when there was no longer any doubt that it was Halsey, and that he would probably recover, we all laughed and cried together.  I am sure I kissed Liddy, and I have had terrible moments since when I seem to remember kissing Mr. Jamieson, too, in the excitement.