The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-09-13

ly withdrew. did not, however, go
 before satisfying myself that I had allayed any suspicion. z5z Ti-s I made up a cock-and-bull story that was in search of certain Made moiselle Elise Vaugarde. who had been in my sisters service, and whose rela- tive, an old aunt. had died in Dijon, leaving her small inheritance. My sister. said, had been much attached to the girl and I had promised to endeavor to find her.
 The story, I saw. appealed to all the girls. the mysterious Melanie sincluded, and when I walked back toward Shaftesbury avenue it was with feel ings of qualification that I had made a great and important discovery.
 Granny had declared it was Lydia Popescu who had called at the Cecil. Yet I had found her in hiding in the humble guise of an ironer.
 Who was Melanie?, Was she Marie Lebas. or was she Lydia Popescu? That was a point for me to decide. My own firm belief was that the dead woman was Lydia Popescu whom Granny hated.
 If she were his enemy. an enemy so deadly that it was to his own interests to get rid of her-and it plainly seemed so-then surely my suspicious were correct.
 Was, Granny playing me false? Was it not possible that Lydia Popescu- the woman who had been obnoxious to the Minister Soutzo. and who had assisted master-criminal to a for tune-might be the woman so cleverly masquerading as an ironer in Soho, and thus avoiding the attentions of the police? Yet if so, then why had the life of this lady's maid Lebas been sacrificed? And why by means so subtle that the whole medical profes- sion of London regarded the cause of death as an enigma?
 The tragedy of Radcliffe Gardens be- trayed the master hand. No blunder had taken that womans life. One witness knew the truth. Elfrida May nard, the. sweet, fresh girl from the Yorkshire moors who held me in her tolls.
 But. alas. fear held her silent. Fear of what?
 I did not remain long inactive. Granny Cough. with his complex na- ture, his careless cosmopolitanism and his genuine philosophy. had now aroused within me curious suspicious suspicious that could not define. By telling me that 1t was not Lydia Pop escu who was dead, he might, I thought, be endeavoring to shield him. self. and to hide from me the real enormity of his crime.
 And yet as I walked along I reflected that that big burly, open-faced fellow with the merry blue eyes-the man who was so essentially man of the wo-ld-the man who loved a tiny child better than his own life. and whose ideal was Myra, so delicate and refined could never exhibit such meanness as to become the cowardly assassin of
 a woman.
 And so whenever I felt suspicious of
 my friend creeping upon me I at once put them behind me, resolved to still believe in him, to still endeavor to ex-
 tricate him from the difficulties into which he had fallen.
 My next action. saw. was to keep | shrewd eye upon the mysterious Melanie.
 | With that object I set about ascer- taining the whereabouts of Garshore and discovered that he had returned | to his comfortable house in Bolton | street, his tenants term being up. He | the man whom the police had never l associated with Rufford the master | criminal, was living there in ease and l security.
 | He was Granny's arch enemy, there l fore he was mine.
 I spent that evening in the lounge
 at the Empire Theater with Cunliffe but from him I learned nothing. He would tell me nothing regarding FL l frida's connection with the crime. The