es up. It is lighted.

Over it they give each other one final appealing stare. There's no help
for it now; they must look. Jake's head turned first, then Mrs. Quimby,
and then that of the real aggressor.

A simultaneous gasp from them all betrays the worst. It had been no
phantom called into being by their overtaxed nerves. A woman lay before
them, face downward on the hard floor. A woman dressed in black, with
hat on head and a little satchel clutched in one stiff, outstretched
hand. Miss Demarest's mother! The little old lady who had come into the
place four hours before!

With a muttered execration, Jake stepped over to her side and
endeavoured to raise her; but he instantly desisted, and looking up at
Quimby and his wife, moved his lips with the one fatal word which ends
all hope:

"Dead!"

They listened appalled, "Dead?" echoed the now terrified Quimby.

"Dead?" repeated his no less agitated wife.

Jake was the least overcome of the three. With another glance at the
motionless figure, he rose, and walking around the body, crossed to the
door and seeing what he had done to make entrance possible, cursed
himself and locked it properly. Meanwhile, Mrs. Quimby, with her eyes on
her husband, had backed slowly away till she had reached the desk,
against which she now stood with fierce and furious eyes, still
clutching at her chain.

Quimby watched her fascinated. He had never seen her look like this
before. What did it portend? They were soon to know.

"Coward!" fell from her lips, as she stared with unrelenting hate at her
husband. "An old woman who was not even conscious of what she saw! I'll
not stand for this killing, Jacob. You may count me out of this and the
chain, too. If you don't----" a threatening gesture finished the
sentence and the two men looking at her knew that they had come up
against a wall.

"Susan!" Was that Quimby speaking? "Susan, are you going back on me
now?"

She pointed at the motionless figure lying in its shrouding black like
an ineffaceable blot on the office floor, then at the securities showing
above the edge of his pocket.

"Were we not close enough to discovery, without drawing the attention of
the police by such an unnecessary murder? She was walking in her sleep.
I remember her eyes as she advanced toward me; there was no sight in
them."

"You lie!" It was the only word which Quimby found to ease the shock
which this simple statement caused him. But Jake saw from the