ers, particularly women.
Just before he went in I had seen the ladies go in a group toward the
far end of the room--to look down at the line of depositors on the
street, which reached around the corner from one of the trust companies,
I thought. I was making a note of an order to send into the outside
office there on the left, and had just pushed this button here under the
table to call a boy to carry it. Mr. Parker had just received a letter
by special delivery, and seemed considerably puzzled over it. No, I
don't know what it was about. Of a sudden I saw him start in his chair,
rise up unsteadily, clap his hand on the back of his head, stagger
across the floor--like this--and fall here."

"Then what happened?"

"Why, I rushed to pick him up. Everything was confusion. I recall
someone behind me saying, 'Here, boy, take all these papers off
the table and carry them into my office before they get lost in the
excitement.' I think it was Bruce's voice. The next moment I heard
someone say, 'Stand back, Mrs. Parker has fainted.' But I didn't pay
much attention, for I was calling to someone not to get a doctor over
the telephone, but to go down to the fifth floor where one has an
office. I made Mr. Parker as comfortable as I could. There wasn't much
I could do. He seemed to want to say something to me, but he couldn't
talk. He was paralysed, at least his throat was. But I did manage to
make out finally what sounded to me like, 'Tell her I don't believe the
scandal, I don't believe it.' But before he could say whom to tell he
had again become unconscious, and by the time the doctor arrived he was
dead. I guess you know everything else as well as I do."

"You didn't hear the shot fired from any particular direction?" asked
Kennedy.

"No, sir."

"Well, where do you think it came from?"

"That's what puzzles me, sir. The only thing I can figure out is that it
was fired from the outside office--perhaps by some customer who had lost
money and sought revenge. But no one out there heard it either, any more
than they did in the directors' room or the ladies' department."

"About that message," asked Kennedy, ignoring what to me seemed to
be the most important feature of the case, the mystery of the silent
bullet. "Didn't you see it after all was over?"

"No, sir; in fact I had forgotten about it till this moment when you
asked me to reconstruct the circumstances exactly. No, sir, I don't
know a thing about it. I can't say it