course. But he had told his cousins why he was going. Would their
story not start a hunt for the woman in the case?

Man is an illogical biped. Before Kirby had seen the glove on the
table and associated it with the crime, his feeling had been that the
gallows was the proper end of so cruel a murderer. Now he not only
intended to protect Rose, but his heart was filled with pity for her.
He understood her better than he did any other woman, her loyalty and
love and swift, upblazing anger. Even if her hand had fired the shot,
he told himself, it was not Wild Rose who had done it--not the little
friend he had come to know and like so well, but a tortured woman
beside herself with grief for the sister to whom she had always been a
mother too.

He slept little, and that brokenly. With the dawn he was out on the
street to buy a copy of the "News." The story of the murder had the
two columns on the right-hand side of the front page and broke over to
the third. He hurried back to his room to read it behind a locked door.

The story was of a kind in which newspapers revel. Cunningham was a
well-known character, several times a millionaire. His death even by
illness would have been worth a column. But the horrible and grewsome
way of his taking off, the mystery surrounding it, the absence of any
apparent motive unless it were revenge, all whetted the appetite of the
editors. It was a big "story," one that would run for many days, and
the "News" played it strong.

As Kirby had expected, he was selected as the probable assassin. A
reporter had interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Cass Hull, who occupied the
apartment just below that of the murdered man. They had told him that