ase. She was palsied.

Before Orr learned of that other things supervened, primarily fresh
extras. These of course were indicated. The imagination of the public
had been stirred. Of all things mystery affects the imagination most.
Here was one agreeably heightened by subsequent editions announcing
the projection of the eternal feminine.

Then those that read these sheets felt that they were getting their
money's worth. But the feeling was accentuated when one of the papers
gratified them with a picture of a girl who they saw was an
exceedingly fetching young woman and who they were informed had
vanished from her residence, the Arundel, where she was known as Miss
Leroy.

Her connection with Loftus, a connection which the neighborhood
generally understood, was shown with reportorial ease. With the same
ease it was established that he had been with her the evening
preceding the night of his death. Bag and baggage the next morning she
had flown.

That fact in itself was prodigiously interesting. A young and pretty
assassin, what! It was quite like fiction. It was almost too good or
too bad to be true. Besides, the picture displayed a girl not merely
pretty but quasi-ideal, a face infinitely delicate, disdainful yet
sad.

Orr saw the picture and saw too that, while perhaps rather flattering,
it did not resemble Marie in the least. As a matter of fact it was an
art editor's fake. But that, of course, the public did not know and
being fed on fakes would not have cared if it had known.

Then more mystery followed. What were her antecedents? Who were her
people? Whence had she come? No one could say. What alone could be
said was that a year previous Loftus had taken for her an apartment at
the Arundel, where she had resided in a manner otherwise genteel,
though with, latterly, but one servant, a negress named Blanche.

At the time the police were as much interested in the servant as the
public in the girl. The latter in departing had had the forethought to
leave the former behind, and, from her, information relevant and
irrelevant was obtained.

To Mr. Peacock for instance, one of the district attorneys, Blanche
related that at dinner her mistress liked sweetbreads and sorrel
with, now and then, a chocolate souffle.

Mr. Peacock was a florid man with the face of a cupid, the guile of a
fox and the voice of an ogre. "I don't care for that," he told her.

"Nor I," Blanche agreeably replied.

"I mean," said Mr. Peac