f your office.
She and her mother afterwards pursued you. She came out here in the
middle of the night, where she knew you were. She was murdered, and by a
weapon whose blade may have been fashioned from an article you
possessed, an article which is now missing, missing since you came to
Sloanehurst this time. You were found bending over the dead body.

"Her mother and her closest friend, her would-be fiance, say she wrote
to you Friday night, addressing her letter to Sloanehurst. The flap of
an envelope, identified by her mother and friend, and bearing the
impression in ink of her handwriting, is found in the fireplace of your
room here. The man who followed her out here, who might have been
suspected of the murder, has proved an alibi.

"Now, I ask you, as a lawyer and a sensible man, who's going to believe
that she came out here without having notified you of her coming? Who,
as facts stand now, is going to believe anything but that you, desperate
with the fear that she would make revelations which would prevent your
marriage to Miss Sloane and keep you from access to an immense amount of
money which you needed--who's going to believe you didn't kill her,
didn't strike her down, there in the night, according to a premeditated
plan, with a dagger which, for better protection of yourself, you had
manufactured in a way which you hoped would make it beyond
identification? Who's----"

Wilton intervened again.

"What's your object, Hastings?" he demanded, springing from his chair.
"You're treating Berne as if he'd killed the woman and you could prove
it!"

Webster was swaying on his feet, falling a little away from the piano
and reeling against it again, his elbows sliding back and forth on its
top. He was extremely pale; even his lips, still stiff and twisted to
what he thought was a belittling smile, were white. He looked at the
detective as a man might gaze at an advancing terror which he could
neither resist nor flee. His going to pieces was so complete, so
absolute, that it astonished Hastings.

"And you, both of you," the old man retorted to Wilton's protest;
"you're treating me as if I were a meddlesome outsider intent on
'framing up' a case, instead of the representative of the Sloane
family--at least, of Miss Lucille Sloane! Why's that?"

"Tell me what's on that paper," Webster said hoarsely, as if he had not
heard the colloquy of the other two.

He held up a trembling hand, but without taking a step. He