“Three dollars a week, including his washing.”

“Very well,” I said.  “Now, Mrs. Tate, I am going to pay last week’s board and a week in advance.  If the mother comes, she is to know nothing of this visit—­absolutely not a word, and, in return for your silence, you may use this money for—­something for your own children.”

Her tired, faded face lighted up, and I saw her glance at the little Tates’ small feet.  Shoes, I divined—­the feet of the genteel poor being almost as expensive as their stomachs.

As we went back Mr. Jamieson made only one remark:  I think he was laboring under the weight of a great disappointment.

“Is King’s a children’s outfitting place?” he asked.

“Not especially.  It is a general department store.”

He was silent after that, but he went to the telephone as soon as we got home, and called up King and Company, in the city.

After a time he got the general manager, and they talked for some time.  When Mr. Jamieson hung up the receiver he turned to me.

“The plot thickens,” he said with his ready smile.  “There are four women named Wallace at King’s none of them married, and none over twenty.  I think I shall go up to the city to-night.  I want to go to the Children’s Hospital.  But before I go, Miss Innes, I wish you would be more frank with me than you have been yet.  I want you to show me the revolver you picked up in the tulip bed.”

So he had known all along!

“It was a revolver, Mr. Jamieson,” I admitted, cornered at last, “but I can not show it to you.  It is not in my possession.”

CHAPTER XXII

A LADDER OUT OF PLACE

At dinner Mr. Jamieson suggested sending a man out in his place for a couple of days, but Halsey was certain there would be nothing more, and felt that he and Alex could manage the situation.  The detective went back to town early in the evening, and by nine o’clock Halsey, who had been playing golf—­as a man does anything to take his mind away from trouble—­was sleeping soundly on the big leather davenport in the living-room.

I sat and knitted, pretending not to notice when Gertrude got up and wandered out into the starlight.  As soon as I was satisfied that she had gone, however, I went out cautiously.  I had no intention of eavesdropping, but I wanted to be certain that it was Jack Bailey she was meeting.  Too many things had occurred in which Gertrude was, or appeared to be, involved, to allow anything to be left in question.

I went slowly across the lawn, skirted the hedge to a break not far from the lodge, and found myself on the open road.  Perhaps a hundred feet to the left the path led across the valley to the Country Club, and only a little way off was the foot-bridge over Casanova Creek.  But just as I was about to turn down the path I heard steps coming toward me, and I shrank into the bushes.  It was Gertrude, going back quickly toward the house.