ing-squad in the Tower. His
confession implicated Sir Joseph. The police raided his place. A
terrific fight ensued. He resisted arrest. He tried to shoot one of
our police. The bullet went wild and killed his wife. Before he could
fire again he was shot down by one of our men."

The astonishing transformations the story had undergone in its transit
from gossip to gossip stunned Marie Louise. The memory of the reality
saddened her beyond laughter. Her distress was real, but she had
self-control enough to focus it on Lady Clifton-Wyatt and murmur:

"Poor thing, she is quite mad!"

There is nothing that so nearly drives one insane as to be accused of
insanity.

The prosecutrix almost strangled on her indignation at Marie Louise's
calm.

"The effrontery of this woman is unendurable, Mrs. Prothero. If you
believe her, you must permit me to leave. I know what I am saying. I
have had what I tell you from the best authority. Of course, it may
sound insane, but wait until you learn what the German secret agents
have been doing in America for years and what they are doing now."

There had been publication enough of the sickening duplicity of
ambassadors and attaches to lead the Americans to believe that
Teutonism meant anything revolting. Mrs. Prothero was befuddled at
this explosion in her quiet home. She asked:

"But surely all this has never been published, has it? I think we
should have heard of it here."

"Of course not," said Lady Clifton-Wyatt. "We don't publish the
accounts of the submarines we sink, do we? No more do we tell the
Germans what spies of theirs we have captured. And, since Sir Joseph
and his wife were dead, there would have been no profit in publishing
broadcast the story of the battle. So they agreed to let it be known
that they died peacefully or rather painfully in their beds, of
ptomaine poisoning."

"That's true," said Mrs. Prothero. "That's what I read. That's what
I've always understood."

Now, curiously, as often happens in court, the discovery that a
witness has stumbled on one truth in a pack of lies renders all he has
said authentic and shifts the guilt to the other side. Marie Louise
could feel the frost of suspicion against her forming in the air.

Polly made one more onset: "But, tell me, Lady Clifton-Wyatt, where
was Marie Louise during all this Wild West End pistol-play?"

"In her room with her lover," snarled Lady Clifton-Wyatt. "The
servants saw her there."

This threw a m