all that, there seemed no doubt that Jennie Brice had been living three days after her disappearance, and that would clear Mr. Ladley. But what had Mr. Howell to do with it all? Why had he not told the police of the letter from Horner? Or about the woman on the bridge? Why had Mr. Bronson, who was likely the man with the pointed beard, said nothing about having traced Jennie Brice to Horner? I did as I thought Mr. Holcombe would have wished me to do. I wrote down on a clean sheet of note-paper all that Eliza Shaeffer said: the description of the black and white dress, the woman's height, and the rest, and then I took her to the court-house, chicks and all, and she told her story there to one of the assistant district attorneys. The young man was interested, but not convinced. He had her story taken down, and [Page 149] she signed it. He was smiling as he bowed us out. I turned in the doorway. "This will free Mr. Ladley, I suppose?" I asked. "Not just yet," he said pleasantly. "This makes just eleven places where Jennie Brice spent the first three days after her death." "But I can positively identify the dress." "My good woman, that dress has been described, to the last stilted arch and Colonial volute, in every newspaper in the United States!" That evening the newspapers announced that during a conference at the jail between Mr. Ladley and James