"If possible," I answered absently. My mind was more actively engaged with other features of the story than with the defrauding of the old farmer, and I was not sorry when I could put Jean on her car, so that I could wander off by myself to think the matter over. How far, if at all, this affair of Diavolo might have a bearing upon the murder mystery was uppermost in my mind. Suppose Diavolo and his "hired man" had quarreled. Suppose they had quarreled to the death? It was, of course, quite probable that a man of Barker's type would have many enemies, but here I was dealing not with probabilities but with a fact, however small it might be. There had been, in the recent past, an intimate relation between Barker and a man who was capable of touring the country as a hypnotist, a man who concealed his identity,--Ha, a motive! They had quarreled over the division of the thousand dollars, and Barker had threatened to expose him! His own death had followed! This chain had developed so rapidly and vividly in my imagination that it was a cold shock when my common sense recalled that I must establish some connection between Diavolo and Gene Benbow to make the thread complete. Whatever part Gene had played or had not played in the tragedy itself, he had confessed to the shot. The confession itself was a fact and must be accounted for, whether the thing confessed was a fact or not.

Up to this time the only theory in my mind that was compatible with Gene's innocence was the theory of romantic self-sacrifice on his part. I had felt that if he was not guilty he was trying to save someone who was. Whom would Gene Benbow wish to save at any cost? Who had killed Barker? Who was Diavolo? Would one name answer all three questions?

That was what I must find out.

[CHAPTER X]

WAYS THAT ARE DARK

My preliminary investigations along the Diavolo trail extended over considerable time, and were intertwined with various other matters of more or less interest, but I shall condense the account here, so as to get on to the more intricate affairs that followed.

To begin with, I wrote to the theatrical manager of each and every town that had been listed in Barker's note-book, asking if "Diavolo" had appeared there, under what management he had come, what his real name was, how he could be reached, and whether they had any letter, contract, or other writing of his. Then I wrote to the metropolitan agencies, and to various Bureaux of Information in the larger cities, and to all the public and private societies and persons whom I knew to have an interest in the occult, asking, in a word, if they knew who "Diavolo" was, and how and where one might come into communication with him. I threw out these baited lines in every direction that I could think of.

Very soon the first answers came in. After I had received three or four I began to make bets with myself on the contents of the next one, though it soon became obviously unsportsmanlike to wager on what was so near a certainty. They were all alike. The man who had been placarded as "Diavolo" had never been seen anywhere until he had come to the theatre in the evening for the performance. All business matters had been handled by his agent, Alfred Barker. Barker had made the arrangements beforehand, sometimes by letter, sometimes in person, and he had always accompanied Diavolo at the time of the performance and looked after everything.

"Barker looked out for Diavolo as carefully as though he were a prima donna with a $10,000 throat," wrote one imaginative manager. "Shouldn't wonder but what he was a woman, come to think of it. He had a squeaky kind of voice on the stage, and he kept himself to himself in a very noticeable way. He wore a beard, but it may have grown in a store. I know his hair came out of a shop all right."

Most of the answers were less imaginative, but equally unsatisfactory. Barker had stood in front of Diavolo and shielded him from observation so effectively that no one but Barker really knew what he looked like. And Barker could not now be consulted!