After the servants had gone, Fletcher asked us to excuse him for
a while, as he wished to run over to the Greenes', who lived
across the bay. Miss Bond was completely prostrated by the death
of her uncle, he said, and was in an extremely nervous condition.
Meanwhile if we found any need of a machine we might use his
uncle's, or in fact anything around the place.

"Walter," said Craig, when Fletcher had gone, "I want to run back
to town to-night, and I have something I'd like to have you do,
too."

We were soon speeding back along the splendid road to Long Island
City, while he laid out our programme.

"You go down to the Star office," he said, "and look through all
the clippings on the whole Fletcher family. Get a complete story
of the life of Helen Bond, too--what she has done in society,
with whom she has been seen mostly, whether she has made any
trips abroad, and whether she has ever been engaged--you know,
anything likely to be significant. I'm going up to the apartment
to get my camera and then to the laboratory to get some rather
bulky paraphernalia I want to take out to Fletcherwood. Meet me
at the Columbus Circle station at, say half-past-ten."

So we separated. My search revealed the fact that Miss Bond had
always been intimate with the ultra-fashionable set, had spent
last summer in Europe, a good part of the time in Switzerland and
Paris with the Greenes. As far as I could find out she had never
been reported engaged, but plenty of fortunes as well as foreign