wed twenty-nine
wounds, twenty-eight of them unnecessary--if the first was inflicted in
mere self-defence. It was horrible mutilation."

"So!" she ridiculed, with obvious effort. "You picture him as a
butcher."

"Precisely. And you, having seen to what lengths his murderous fury
could take him, were afraid to face him--even after your long, long
search had located him again. Let's be sensible, Mrs. Brace. Let's give
the facts of this business a hearing.

"You had come to Washington and located him at last. But, after
receiving several demands from you, he'd stopped reading your
letters--sent them back unopened. Consequently, in order for you to make
an appointment with him, he had to be communicated with in a handwriting
he didn't know. Hence, your daughter had to write the letter making that
appointment a week ago last night. Then, however----"

"What makes you think----"

"Then, however," he concluded, overbearing her with his voice, "you
hadn't the courage to face him--out there, in the dark, alone. You
persuaded Mildred to go--in your place. And he killed her."

"Ha!" The mocking exclamation sounded as though it had been pounded out
of her by a blow upon her back. "What makes you say that? Where do you
get that? Who put that into your head?"

She volleyed those questions at him with indescribable rapidity, her
lips drawn back from her teeth, her brows straining far up toward the
line of her hair. The profound disgust with which he viewed her did not
affect her. She darted to and fro in her mind, running about in the
waste and tumult of her momentary confusion, seeking the best thing to
say, the best policy to adopt, for her own ends.

He had had time to determine that much when her gift of self-possession
reasserted itself. She forced her lips back to their thin line, and
steadied herself. He could see the vibrant tautness of her whole body,
exemplified in the rigidity with which she held her crossed knees, one
crushed upon the other.

"I know, I think, what misled you," she answered her own question.
"You've talked to Gene Russell, of course. He may have heard--I think he
did hear--Mildred and me discussing the mailing of a letter that Friday
night."

"He did," Hastings said, firmly.

"But he couldn't have heard anything to warrant your theory, Mr.
Hastings. I merely made fun of her wavering after she'd once said she'd
confront Berne Webster again with her appeal for fair play."

He inspected her wi