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something about footprints.
    â€œThe gardener’s,” he said. “Last night when I called up at your place I hadn’t got all the facts. I have now.”
    There was something about the way he looked at me with his keen little gray eyes, something about the calm evasiveness of his manner—
    â€œHave you any ideas?” he asked quietly. “Is that why you came?”
    I bluffed my way out of this. “No. Just that your call last night has got me interested in the business—Harkness being our nearest neighbor, I mean. I’m glad you got the maniac, though. It’s a load off my mind.”
    â€œI’m glad,” he said, and before he could perhaps wheedle something out of me I took my departure. Beryl was reading in the lounge when I got in. She glanced up at me.
    â€œSo they got the maniac,” she said.
    â€œYes, that’s right. They—” I broke off and stared at her. “How did you know?”
    â€œInspector Hilton came to tell me this afternoon.”
    â€œSo that was why he was so evasive,” I breathed. “Trying to get me separate from you and match up both lots of statements—”
    Beryl asked slowly, “You called on him, then? Just why?”
    â€œOnly to see how far he’d got with the Harkness murder.”
    â€œYour concern over Harkness is most touching,” she commented dryly, tossing down her book. “It would be more truthful to say that you really wanted to discover if I had had anything to do with it, wouldn’t it? I have already warned you, Dick, not to dabble in things which do not concern you.”
    â€œThis does concern me!” I shouted.
    â€œI think,” she said, “you had better freshen up for dinner.”
    The hot retort I had ready died. I left the room, tidied up and came down to dinner in silence. It was as I ate that my eye wandered to the book Beryl had been reading. It was Calcot’s Advanced Astronomy .
    â€œIt happens to interest me,” Beryl remarked, following my gaze. “In fact in these days it is about the only thing that does interest me. There is something rather wonderful...about space and time.”
    â€œI suppose so,” I said. No use reminding her she had never even looked at a star in the old days, let alone studied astronomy. Then I got to thinking about the bloodstone. ‘Perhaps from a passing meteor or outer space,’ that write-up had said.... Lord! I decided to look at that textbook more closely if I ever got the chance.
    Dinner over and our conversation none too free we took up positions on opposite sides of the lounge. Beryl took up her textbook again and I scowled through the evening paper. First chance I had had so far to look through it, and pretty soon I came across something that hit me right between the eyes.
    Ordinarily it would not have meant a thing, for it was only a tiny column, but now—
    FAMOUS SOPRANO FOUND MURDERED
    I read the report hurriedly. It stated that Madame Elva Borini, famous Italian prima-donna, had been found mysteriously murdered in her Naples villa that morning. Found by her maid. The famous singer had had a sash cord wrapped three times round her neck and knotted. Police were investigating, and so on and so on.
    I looked up with a grim face over my newspaper. I was on the point of asking Beryl if she had ever heard of Madame Borini when her eyes lifted from her book and looked straight into mine—calmly, insolently. Completely and utterly the question went out of my mind. But the mystery of the business remained—
    This was getting beyond all reason. A woman in Italy had died in precisely the same fashion as Boyd Harkness—But how? Definitely Beryl could not have done it, separated by a thousand miles of land and sea. Or could she...?
    I started thinking then about the other people I’d read about—the remaining owners of the bloodstone jewel sections. Suppose they too were marked down?