k his head.

"Kroner is in the Turkish bath two blocks down the street. Chichester
went home ten minutes ago."

"Madame Sin will be unaware of intrusion," Keane repeated enigmatically
and with seeming irrelevance.

He turned to Beatrice, and the two went to the woman's rooms.

* * * * *

Keane softly closed Madame Sin's hall door behind him after Beatrice had
entered first and reported that the woman was alone and in what seemed a
deep sleep. At first, with a stifled scream, she had called out that
Madame Sin was dead; then she had pronounced it sleep....

Keane went at once to the central figure of the living-room: the body of
Madame Sin, on a chaise-lounge near the window. The woman was in a blue
negligee, with her shapely legs bare and her arms and throat pale ivory
against the blue silk. Her eyes were not quite closed. Her breast rose
and fell, very slowly, almost like the breathing of a chloroformed
person.

Keane touched her bare shoulder. She did not stir. There was no
alteration of the deep, slow breathing. He lifted one of her eyelids.
The eye beneath stared blindly at him, the lid went nearly closed again
at the cessation of his touch.

"Trance," Keane said. "And the most profound one I have ever seen. It's
about what I had expected."

"I've seen her somewhere before," said Beatrice suddenly.

Keane nodded. "You have. She is a movie extra, working now and then for
the Long Island Picture Company. But I'm not much interested in this
beautiful shell. For that's all she is at the moment--a shell, now
emptied and unhuman. We'll look around. You give me your impressions as
they come to you, and we'll see if they match mine."

They went to the bedroom of the apartment. Bedroom was like living-room
in that it was impersonal, a standard chamber in a large hotel. But this
seemed almost incredibly impersonal! There was not one picture, not one
feminine touch. In the bath there were scarcely any toilet articles; and
in the closet there was only an overnight bag and a suitcase by way of
luggage, with neither of them entirely emptied of their contents.

"One impression I get is that these rooms have not been lived in even
for twenty-four hours!" said Beatrice.

Keane nodded. "If Madame Sin retreated here only to fall into that deep
trance, and did not wake again till it was time for her to venture out,
the rooms would have just this look. And I think that is exactly what
she h