The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1931-03-27
Henry Kitchell Webster
Copyright by The Bobbs-Merrill Co.
wNU Service

intellectually have adopted 1t, If
for no other reason than that 1t
brought him out in clearer, less am
biguous light.
But she found she couldn't adopt it.
He wasn't much better actor than
she was. His manner while he had
been trying to convince her that he had
been led by nothing but disinterested
benevolence in trying to find her had
I been sleek and shy, utterly uncon-
vincing. But some of the things he'd
told her she knew to be true. Her ia
Their had been paid every week regu-
larry, through the whole four years
they'd lived at the hotel, in cash. For
ster wouldn't have known that unless
he'd paid him himself, or 1t wasn't
likely that he would. What he'd said
about her fathers feeling disgraced
and having lived practically in hiding
was confirmed, too, by innumerable
memories of his having cautioned her
not to talk to people, nor answer their
questions. nor make friends with them.
Claire Cleveland, somehow, had
found the secret out. She'd spoken
with perfect confidence of the labora-
tory where her father had worked.
Had she really worked for him there
evenings, as she said she had? 1t
was possible, but it didn't seem very
likely. At any rate, it was fatty I'M
believable that he would have confided
to her at those times, as she said he
had, the story of his California dis
aster. And yet it was clear that she
knew about that. She'd spoken of the
trial and the sensation that it created.
There'd been hardly anything else in
the papers at the time, she said-at
least in the San Francisco papers.
Rhoda sat erect and held her
breath. Why, why hadn't she caught
that slip at the time? All it meant,
all it could possibly mean, was that
it had been in the San Francisco pa
pers that Claire had read about it.
She'd been In San Francisco, then,
during the trial. She hadn't said so.
She hadn't meant to give that away.
She'd pretended that it was from Wal
ter McFarland's own lips that she'd
heard this story, long afterward, here
in Chicago. OF counsel Claire Cleve-
land was the girl on the train.
She recalled her first impression Of
Claire, her momentary belief that she
sIv,Sf hn
looked rather nice, and young
much, over twenty. Six years ago she
could have looked convincingly like
an innocent young girl crying for
lornly over the loss Of her ticket and
her money and the PROJECT that they'd
put her off the train. She had some
thing of that look left even now. Mar
tin had described her as looking
younger than her voice sounded. Why
hadn't her voice given her away to
Walter Mcfarland?
OF course it was hard to tell where
the truth left off and where the lies
began. Claire's professed hatred Of
Forster was true, though as yet spe-
officially unaccounted for. She had
tried to convince Rhoda, though with
a suspicious insistence upon her own
lack of knowledge, that Forster was
the person primarily responsible for
the plot against her father.
That felt like the truth though it
obviously wasn't. Forster had stopped
being frightened and had burst into
rage Of pure relief when she had
told him that Claire had said that.
That disposed Of the possibility that
he could be the man who had COM
PEELED, or persuaded, or coldly hired,
Claire.
And yet he couldn't be left out of
the pattern altogether. He had ad-
vertised for Rhoda Mcfarland and no
one but an idiot could doubt after
seeing him and hearing him talk, that
he had done so in the furtherance of
some mean purpose Of his own. Claire,
who had once been his private secre-
tary, and Max Lewis, who was his
nephew, knew, or thought they knew,
what that purpose was, and had tried