e had
been weeping; she looked ten years older than when I had last seen her.

"What is it? What is it?" I demanded of her. "I know nothing but your
telegram!"

"Looks like murder," said Sergeant Conlon, dry and short. "I wouldn't
talk much if I was you, not till the coroner gets here. I'm bound to
make notes of what you say."

For the merest hundredth of a second my scalp prickled, my flesh went
cold; but sheer incredulity was still strong upon me; it beat back the
horror. It was simply not real, all this.

"At least," I managed, "give me facts--something!"

Then unreality deepened to utter nightmare, passing all bounds of
reason. Lucette spoke, and life turned for me to sheer prattling
madness; to a gibbering grotesque!

"_Susan_ did it!" she cried, her voice going high and strident, slipping
from all control. "I know it! I know she did! I know it! Wasn't she with
her? _Alone_ with her? Who else could have done it! Who else! _It's in
her blood!_"

Well, of course, when a woman you have played tag with in her girlhood
goes mad before you, raves----

How could one act or answer? Then, too, she had vanished; or had I
really seen her in the flesh at all? Really heard her voice, crying
out....

Sergeant Conlon's voice came next; short, dry, businesslike. It
compelled belief.

"I've a question or two for you, Mr. Hunt. This way; steady!"

I felt his hand under my elbow.

Gertrude's apartment was evidently a very large one; I had vaguely the
sensation of passing down a long hall with an ell in it, and so into a
small, simply furnished, but tasteful room--the sitting-room for her
maids, as I later decided. Sergeant Conlon shut the door and locked it.

"That's not to keep you in," he said; "it's to keep others out. Sit
down, Mr. Hunt. Smoke somethin'. Let's make ourselves comfortable."

The click of the shot bolt in the lock had suddenly, I found, restored
my power of cooerdination. It had been like the sharp handclap which
brings home a hypnotized subject to reason and reality. I was now, in a
moment, not merely myself again, but peculiarly alert and steady of
nerve, and I gave matter-of-fact assent to Sergeant Conlon's
suggestions. I lit a cigarette and took possession of the most
comfortable chair. Conlon remained standing. He had refused my
cigarettes, but he now lighted a long, roughly rolled cigar.

"I get these from a fellow over on First Avenue," he explained affably.
"He makes them up himself. They