any gossip? S'posin' they were trying to break things off, an' makin' it
pretty uncomfortable for the girl? S'pose that, eh?"

"Yes," argued the reporter. "Suppose all of that. Where does it get you?"

"It gets you just here"--Leverage talked slowly, heavily, tapping his
spatulate fingers on the table to emphasize his points--"we know this
bird was going to elope with some skirt. All right! Now I ask this--why
go all around the block, looking for some one he might have been mixed up
with, when the woman a man is most likely to elope with is the girl he's
engaged to marry?"

Silence--several seconds of it. Carroll spoke:

"Miss Gresham, you mean?"

"Sure, David--sure! I'm not sayin' she was the woman, mind you. I'm not
sayin' anything except that if I'm right in thinkin' that maybe her
folks weren't as crazy about this guy Warren as they seemed--if I'm
right in that, maybe they was plannin' to take matters in their own
hands and elope."

"It's possible."

"Sure, it's possible, and--"

"But, chief," interrupted the reporter who had done most of the talking,
"why should Miss Gresham kill Warren?"

"I didn't say she did, did I?"