uilty knowledge of it.

A little anxious, she had asked him to promise that he would be back by
ten o'clock, for the inquest. He thought he could do that, although he
had persuaded the coroner that his evidence would not be necessary--the
judge and Webster had found the body; their stories would establish the
essential facts.

"Why do you want me here then?" he asked, not comprehending her
uneasiness.

"For one thing," she said, "I want you to talk to father--before the
inquest. I wish you could now, but he isn't up."

It was eight o'clock when Miss Davis, telephone operator in the cheap
apartment house on Fourteenth street known as The Walman, took the old
man's card and read the inscription, over the wire:

"'Mr. Jefferson Hastings.'"

After a brief pause, she told him:

"She wants to know if you are a detective."

"Tell her I am."

"You may go up," the girl reported. "It's Number Forty-three, fourth
floor--no elevator."

After ascending the three flights of stairs, he sat down on the top
step, to get his breath. Mr. Hastings was stout, not to say
sebaceous--and he proposed to begin the interview unhandicapped.

Mrs. Brace answered his ring. There was nobody else in the apartment.
The moment he looked into her restless, remarkably brilliant black eyes,
he catalogued her as cold and repellent.

"One of the swift-eyed kind," he thought; "heart as hard as her head. No
blood in her--but smart. Smart!"

He relied, without question, on his ability to "size up" people at first
glance. It was a gift with him, like the intuition of women; and to it,
he thought, he owed his best work as a detective.

Mrs. Brace, without speaking, without acknowledging his quiet "Mrs.
Brace, I believe?" led him into the living room after waiting for him
to close the entrance door. This room was unusually large, out of
proportion to the rest of the apartment which included, in addition to
the narrow entry, a bedroom, kitchen and bath--all, so far as his
observation went, sparsely and cheaply furnished.

They sat down, and still she did not speak, but studied his face. He got
the impression that she considered all men her enemies and sought some
intimation of what his hostility would be like.

"I'm sorry to trouble you at such a time," he began. "I shall be as
brief as possible."

Her black eyebrows moved upward, in curious interrogation. They were
almost mephistophelian, and unpleasantly noticeable, drawn thus nearer
to the