ve the life of my lover--to prevent this great
tragedy which brings grief to so many."

Crewe looked at her sharply, and then nodded his head in acquiescence of
the fact that much misery would have been averted if she had been in time
to save the life of Sir Horace Fewbanks.

"When you went into the room, Sir Horace Fewbanks, you say, was lying on
the floor, dying. Whereabouts in the room was he?"

"If he had been in this room he would have been lying just behind you,
with his head to the wall and his feet pointing towards that window. He
struggled and groaned after I went in, and altered his position a little,
but not much. He died so."

Crewe rapidly reviewed his recollection of the room in which the judge
had been killed. Once again Gabrielle's statement tallied with his own
reconstruction of the crime and the manner of its perpetration. If the
murder had been committed in his office the second bullet would have gone
through the window instead of imbedding itself in the wall, and the judge
would have fallen in the spot where she indicated.

"And where was the writing-desk from where you got your letters?" was
Crewe's next question.

"It was over there--almost by that--your little bookcase there."

She pointed to a small oaken bookstand which stood slightly in advance
of the more imposing shelves in which reposed the portentous volumes
of newspaper clippings and photographs which constituted Crewe's
"Rogues' Library."

"Now we come to the letters. You took them from the secret drawer in the
desk. Why did you remove them?"

"Because I would not have the police agents find them, for then they
would want to know so much."

"And what did you do with them?"

"Monsieur Crewe, I destroyed them. When I got home I burnt them all--I
was so frightened."

"You mean you were frightened to keep them in your possession after the
judge was killed?"

"Yes. What place had I to keep them safe from prying eyes? So, monsieur,
I burnt them all--one by one--and the charred fragments I kept and took
into the Park next day, where I scattered them unobserved."

"And what became of the letter you wrote to Sir Horace Fewbanks at
Craigleith Hall, asking him to come to London and save you from your
husband's persecutions?"

She looked at him earnestly in the endeavour to ascertain if he had laid
a trap for her.

"Sir Horace destroyed it in Scotland, I suppose, if the police did
not find it."

"Strange that he should have kep