Washington
Streets. Signed, Carlotta Valencia. Victor Perez."

On the table, almost hidden by her hand, I saw the thing which I had
seen once before lying in the gutter on Dupont Street--the
pearl-handled revolver.

I sat there at her feet, and, looking up at her, I felt as if she had
won, though now I knew it was quite the other way. But she looked so
calm, so mighty, so indifferent, sitting up there above me, that she
made death seem a little thing, and she herself not even wicked. Then
the room swam away from me as in a dream.

The next thing I was conscious of was a broken foreign voice speaking;
and I found myself covered up with a great coat lying on a sofa in the
down-stairs _sala_; and there, strangely seen among its velvet and
gilding, was father with his hair tossed on end and his clothes huddled
upon him, and Mr. Dingley, very white and drawn, and the peon Perez,
who was talking. I listened to his voice going on as if it were part
of a dream.

Yes, he said, it was true there had been bad blood between the two men.
First it had been the young man's debts, and then it had been the
Senora. The Senora had told the young man she would give up Rood; but
of course that was impossible, Perez said, with a shrug, as where was
the money to come from he should like to know? But she was constantly
afraid lest young Montgomery might find it out. Therefore, Perez said,
when he had seen Montgomery going into Rood's place at two o'clock on
the morning of the shooting he went at once to his mistress and told
her. Taking Perez with her, she had hurried to the gambling-house with
the purpose of somehow separating the two, and there in the bar the
quarrel had taken place.

It seemed that the truth of Rood's position as "protector" to the
Senora had reached Montgomery, and he had come to tax Rood with it, and
Rood had told him. He told him even before the Senora's face, and
Montgomery had said he was done with the whole crew of them. He was
going to get out of it, he was going away. Then the Senora had clung
to Montgomery, telling him she would do anything to keep him with her;
and Rood had turned upon him. It was then that the Senora had shot
Rood. He had been standing so near the swinging door that at the shot,
to their horror, he had fallen backward through it.

Before any one could think, the peon went on, Montgomery had snatched
the revolver from her, saying: "I shot him," and had rushed out into
the s