dwindling every night, that--

I was thinking about it all there in the back of my head, trying to see
a way out of it--you know if there is such an agreement as Obermuller
swears there is, it's against the law--while we rattled on, the two of
us, like a couple of children on a picnic, when I heard a crash behind
me.

The salad bowl had slipped from Obermuller's fingers. He stood with
his back turned to me, his eyes fixed upon that searching detective.

But he wasn't searching any more, Mag. He was standing still as a
pointer that's scented game. He had moved the lounge out from the
wall, and there on the floor, spread open where it had fallen, lay a
handsome elephant-skin purse, with gold corners. From where I stood,
Mag, I could read the plain gold lettering on the dark leather. I
didn't have to move. It was plain enough--quite plain.

Mrs. EDWARD RAMSAY

Hush, hush, Mag; if you take on so, how can I tell you the rest?

Obermuller got in front of me as I started to walk into the
dining-room. I don't know what his idea was. I don't suppose he does
exactly--if it wasn't to spare me the sight of that damned thing.

Oh, how I hated it, that purse! I hated it as if it had been something
alive that could be glad of what it had done. I wished it was alive
that I could tear and rend it and stamp on it and throw it in a fire,
and drag it out again, with burned and bleeding nails, to tear it again
and again. I wanted to fall on it and hide it; to push it far, far
away out of sight; to stamp it down--down into the very bottom of the
earth, where it could feel the hell it was making for me.

But I only stood there, stupidly looking at it, having pushed past
Obermuller, as though I never wanted to see anything else.

And then I heard that blue-eyed fellow's words.

"Well," he said, pulling on his coat as though he'd done a good day's
work, "I guess you'd just better come along with me."

XI.

"Don't you think you'd better get out of this?" I asked Obermuller, as
he came into the station a few minutes after I got there.

"No."

"I do."

"Because?"

"Because it won't do you any good to have your name mixed up with a
thing like this."

"But it might do you some good."

I didn't answer for a minute after that. I sat in my chair, my eyes
bent on the floor. I counted the cracks between the chair and the
floor of the office where the Chief was busy with another case. I
counted them six times, back