“Yes, I do.  And now that you are your uncle’s heiress, I suppose he no longer wishes to break the engagement between you and him.”

I said this bitterly, for I loathed the nature that could thus turn about in accordance with the wheel of fortune.

To my surprise, she too spoke bitterly.

“Yes,” she said; “he insists now that we are engaged, and that he never really wanted to break it.  He has shown me positively that it is my money that attracts him, and if it were not that I don’t want to seem to desert him now, when he is in trouble—­”

She paused, and my heart beat rapidly.  Could it be that at last she saw Gregory Hall as he really was, and that his mercenary spirit had killed her love for him?  At least, she had intimated this, and, forcing myself to be content with that for the present, I said: 

“Would you, then, if you could, get him out of this trouble?”

“Gladly.  I do not think he killed Uncle Joseph, but I’m sure I do not know who did.  Do you?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” I answered honestly, for there, in Florence Lloyd’s presence, gazing into the depths of her clear eyes, my last, faint suspicion of her wrong-doing faded away.  “And it is this total lack of suspicion that makes the case so simple, and therefore so difficult.  A more complicated case offers some points on which to build a theory.  I do not blame Mr. Goodrich for suspecting Mr. Hall, for there seems to be no one else to suspect.”

Just then Mr. Lemuel Porter dropped in for an evening call.  Of course, we talked over the events of the day, and Mr. Porter was almost vehement in his denunciation of the sudden move of the district attorney.

“It’s absurd,” he said, “utterly absurd.  Gregory Hall never did the thing.  I’ve known Hall for years, and he isn’t that sort of a man.  I believe Philip Crawford’s story, of course, but the murderer, who came into the office after Florence’s visit to her uncle, and before Philip arrived, was some stranger from out of town—­some man whom none of us know; who had some grievance against Joseph, and who deliberately came and went during that midnight hour.”

I agreed with Mr. Porter.  I had thought all along it was some one unknown to the Sedgwick people, but some one well known to Joseph Crawford.  For, had it been an ordinary burglar, the victim would at least have raised a protecting hand.

“Of course Hall will be set free at once,” continued Mr. Porter, “but to arrest him was a foolish thing to do.”

“Still, he ought to prove his alibi,” I said.

“Very well, then; make him prove it.  Give him the third degree, if necessary, and find out where he was on Tuesday night.”

“I doubt if they could get it out of him,” I observed, “if he continues determined not to tell.”

“Then he deserves his fate,” said Mr. Porter, a little petulantly.  “He can free himself by a word.  If he refuses to do so it’s his own business.”