hers."

"Well?"

"Well, sir, when I was in the hall I heard Mrs. Annandale say as how
she wanted a divorce."

"Aha!" exclaimed Mr. Digby. "The plot thickens. Was she in love with
Loftus?"

"She was that, sir. Anyone could see it."

"Then what?"

"Mr. Annandale went upstairs, came down again and went out."

"Did you attach any importance to his going upstairs?"

"He went to get his pistol, sir."

"Oho! He had a pistol, had he?"

"Yes, sir. A 32-calibre. I bought it for him myself."

"That is a very good story," said Mr. Digby, who was a judge.

CHAPTER VII

HELD WITHOUT BAIL

The theories and clues in the now celebrated case Orr related to
Sylvia one after another as they reached him through different
channels. To the story of Marie Leroy she listened, her face averted,
without a word. The footpad theory she dismissed. It was absurd. But
the suicide theory impressed her. Even to her mind it was not logical.
Loftus was too cavalier, too supremely indifferent, to make it
plausible. On the other hand, it disposed of the whole matter.
Moreover, as she put it to Orr, what is suicide but the sinful end of
a sinful life? "Who knows," she asked, "what sudden remorse he may
have experienced that last night when he was alone there in the park?"

"Suicide," Orr had replied, "is assassination driven in. It is the
crisis of a pre-existing condition, a condition wholly pathological,
one which remorse may complicate but which it cannot directly induce.
There was nothing whatever the matter with Loftus. He may have been
sinful, as you express it, but he was sound. Besides, the man had no
more conscience than a tom cat."

Nevertheless Sylvia clung to the theory. She had no other. Hopelessly
she hoped that time would verify it. But she suffered acutely. Orr's
account of Fanny's attitude frightened her. What frightened her most
was the tale that Harris told. The latter she learned from the press.

Meanwhile she had gone to Mrs. Loftus. The old lady had not recognized
her, or, rather, had mistaken her for someone else. "My boy is away,
Fanny," she said, her head shaking as she spoke. "He is away. I don't
know where." She began to whimper.

Sylvia, too, had wept. It was pitiful. The proud, arrogant woman Fate
had reduced to a cowering crone.

Meanwhile also Sylvia had tried to see Fanny. But at the hotel where
Mrs. Price had been stopping she was informed that both were away. An
address was given her to whic