bade us a hasty good-by and climbed into his car at the street-
entrance. "Is it a clue or a stall?"

"That remains to be seen," he replied, noncommittally. "Just now
the thing that interests me most is what I can accomplish at the
laboratory in the way of finding out what is the matter with
Mansfield."

While Kennedy was busy with the various solutions which he made of
the contents of the ramekins that had held the mushrooms, I
wandered over to the university library and waded through several
volumes on fungi without learning anything of value. Finally,
knowing that Kennedy would probably be busy for some time, and
that all I should get for my pains by questioning him would be
monosyllabic grunts until he was quite convinced that he was on
the trail of something, I determined to run into the up-town
office of the Star and talk over the affair as well as I could
without violating what I felt had been given us in confidence.

I could not, it turned out, have done anything better, for it
seemed to be the gossip of the Broadway cafes and cabarets that
Mansfield had been plunging rather deeply lately and had talked
many of his acquaintances into joining him in a pool, either
outright or on margins. It seemed to be a safe bet that not only
Lewis and Doctor Murray had joined him, but that Madeline Hargrave
and Mina Leitch, who had had a successful season and some spare
thousands to invest, might have gone in, too. So far the fortunes
of the stock-market had not smiled on Mansfield's schemes, and, I
reflected, it was not impossible that what might be merely an
incident to a man like Mansfield could be very serious to the rest