ything else?'

'No.' Margaret was surprised. 'The doctor said it was that.'

'I know. I only wanted to have your own impression. I believe that
when people die of heart failure in that way, they often make
desperate efforts to explain what has happened, and go on trying to
talk when they can only make inarticulate sounds. Do you remember if
it was at all like that?'

'Not at all,' Margaret said. 'She whispered the last words she spoke,
but they were quite distinct. Then she drew three or four deep
breaths, and all at once I saw that she was dead, and I called the
doctor from the next room.'

'I suppose that might be heart failure,' said Griggs thoughtfully.
'You are quite sure that you thought it was only that, are you not?'

'Only what?' Margaret asked with growing surprise.

'Only fright, or the result of having been half-suffocated in the
crowd.'

'Yes, I think I am sure. What do you mean? Why do you insist so much?'

'It's of no use to tell other people,' said Griggs, 'but you may just
as well know. I found her lying in a heap behind a door, where there
could not have been much of a crowd.'

'Perhaps she had taken refuge there, to save herself,' Margaret
suggested.

'Possibly. But there was another thing. When I got home I found that
there was a little blood on the palm of my hand. It was the hand I had
put under her waist when I lifted her.'

'Do you mean to say you think she was wounded?' Margaret asked,
opening her eyes wide.

'There was blood on the inside of my hand,' Griggs answered, 'and I
had no scratch to account for it. I know quite well that it was on the
hand that I put under her waist--a little above the waist, just in the
middle of her back.'

'But it would have been seen afterwards.'

'On the dark red silk she wore? Not if there was very little of it.
The doctor never thought of looking for such a wound. Why should he?
He had not the slightest reason for suspecting that the poor girl had
been murdered.'

'Murdered?'

Margaret looked hard at Griggs, and then she suddenly shuddered from
head to foot. She had never before had such a sensation; it was like
a shock from an electric current at the instant when the contact is
made, not strong enough to hurt, but yet very disagreeable. She felt
it at the moment when her mind connected what Griggs was saying with
the dying girl's last words, 'he did it'; and with little Ida's look
of horror when she had watched Mr. Van Torp's lips while h