shown long ago--that I'm a man.'

"Then he went away, and I was frightened. All sorts of possibilities
presented themselves to me--vague, indefinite, formless terrors. I
tried to shake them off, but could not. It became firmly fixed in my
mind that something was going to happen--that Allan was about
to--to--" here the steady voice faltered once more, "to take a step
that would bring danger upon him.

"And that night I went to Mrs. Barron's as I had promised. I talked to
people--I laughed--I even danced. But never for a moment did the fear
cease gripping at my heart. At last I could stand it no longer. I felt
that I must go to where this danger was confronting Allan; and as the
house in Christie Place was the first that arose in my mind, I went
there.

"I saw the cab upon the opposite side of the street; and the driver of
it looked at me so hard that I drove on without stopping, as the
newspaper states. But my courage came back in a few moments; I
returned and went in."

"You halted on the stairs," said Ashton-Kirk. "Why?"

"Because I saw a light moving about in the hallway above," answered
Miss Vale. Then she added: "But how did you know that I stopped upon
the stairs?"

"I did not know it," replied Ashton-Kirk. "In his story the cab driver
says you entered at Hume's door and went upstairs. I have found that
the position which his cab occupied at the time was fully fifteen feet
west of Hume's doorway, making it impossible for him to see whether
you went up at once, or not. In the face of what immediately followed
your entrance, or rather, what is said to have followed it, I thought
it reasonable to suppose that you had stopped!"

"Thank you," said Miss Vale.

"You say there was a light moving about; but what else did you see?"

"Nothing."

"But you heard something?"

"Yes; the revolver shot, and then the dreadful cry that followed it."

Ashton-Kirk unclasped his hands from about his knee, placed them upon
the arms of his chair and leaned forward.

"But between the two--after the shot, and before the cry, you heard a
door close," he said.

She gave a little gasp of surprise.

"I did," she said. "I remember it distinctly now that you mention it.
It closed sharply, but not very loudly."

The investigator leaned back and began drumming upon the arm of his
chair with his long supple fingers.

"Experience never quite takes away that comfortable feeling of
satisfaction that the proving of a theory gives