"Not yet," said the reporter.
"Then I will say nothing else," she declared, and her lips closed in a straight line.
"What was the motive for murder?" Hatch insisted.
"I will say nothing else," she replied, firmly. "And what makes you positive there was murder?"
"Good-night. You need not come again, for I will not see you."
Miss Stanford turned and left the room. Hatch, sadly puzzled, bewildered, stood staring after her a moment, then went out, his brain alive with possibilities, with intangible ends which would not be connected. He was eager to lay the new facts before The Thinking Machine.
From Dorchester the reporter took a car for his home. In his room, with the tangible threads of the mystery spread out on a table, he thought and surmised far into the night, and when he finally replaced them all in his pocket and turned down the light it was with a hopeless shake of his head.
On the following morning when Hatch arose he picked up a paper and went to breakfast. He spread the paper before him and there--the first thing he saw--was a huge headline, stating that a burglar had entered the room of Constans St. George and had tried to kill Mr. St. George. A shot had been fired at him and had passed through his left arm.
Mr. St. George had been asleep when the door of his apartments was burst in by the thief. The artist arose at the noise, and as he stepped into the reception-room had been shot. The wound was trivial. The burglar escaped; there was no clew.