ce on February 11. Shortly after the widow left Paris
with Georges de Saint Pierre for the suburb of Courbevoie.

Mace had elicited certain facts from the porter at the Rue de Boulogne
and other witnesses, which confirmed his suspicion that the widow had
played a sinister part in her lover's misfortune. Her insistence that
he should take her to the ball on January 13; the fact that, contrary to
the ordinary politeness of a gentleman, he was walking in front of her
at the time of the attack; and that someone must have been holding the
gate open to enable the assailant to escape it was a heavy gate, which,
if left to itself after being opened, would swing too quickly on its
hinges and shut of its own accord--these facts were sufficient to
excite suspicion. The disappearance, too, of the man calling himself
her brother, who had been seen at her apartment on the afternoon of the
13th, coupled with the mysterious interview in the cemetery, suggested
the possibility of a crime in which the widow had had the help of an
accomplice. To facilitate investigation it was necessary to separate the
widow from her lover. The examining magistrate, having ascertained from
a medical report that such a separation would not be hurtful to the
patient, ordered the widow to be sent back to Paris, and the family of
M. de Saint Pierre to take her place. The change was made on March 6. On
leaving Courbevoie the widow was taken to the office of Mace. There the
commissary informed her that she must consider herself under provisional
arrest. "But who," she asked indignantly, "is to look after my Georges?"
"His family," was the curt reply. The widow, walking up and down the
room like a panther, stormed and threatened. When she had in some
degree recovered herself, Mace asked her certain questions. Why had she
insisted on her lover going to the ball? She had done nothing of the
kind. How was it his assailant had got away so quickly by the open gate?
She did not know. What was the name and address of her reputed brother?
She was not going to deliver an honest father of a family into the
clutches of the police. What was the meaning of her visit to the
Charonne Cemetery? She went there to pray, not to keep assignations.
"And if you want to know," she exclaimed, "I have had typhoid
fever, which makes me often forget things. So I shall say nothing
more--nothing--nothing."

Taken before the examining magistrate, her attitude continued to
be defiant and arr