Instantly, with a new force, Lucette's outcry swept back upon me. "Susan did it! Wasn't she with her? Alone with her? _It's in her blood!_"

And at once every faculty of my spirit leaped, with an almost supernatural acuteness, to the defense of the one being on earth I wholly loved. All sense of unreality vanished. Now for it--since it must be so! Susan and I, if need be, against the world!

"Go on, sergeant. What's your theory?"

"Never mind my theory! I'd like to get _yours_ first--when I've given you all I know."

"All right, then! But be quick about it!"

"Easy, Mr. Hunt! It's not as simple as all that. Well, here it is: Somewhere round ten o'clock, a Miss Blake--a magazine-writer livin' on West 10th Street--your ward, I understand----"

"Yes."

"Well, she calls here, alone, and asks for Mrs. Arthur. Mrs. Hunt's personal maid--English; she's no chicken either--she lets her in and says Mrs. Arthur isn't here--see--and didn't the door boy tell her so?

Yes, says Miss Blake, but she'll wait for her anyway. The maid--name of Iffley--says she thought that was queer, so she put it to Miss Blake that maybe she'd better ask Mrs. Hunt. Oh, says Miss Blake, I thought she was out, too. But it seems Mrs. Hunt was in her private sittin'

room; she'd had a slight bilious attack, and she'd got her corsets off and somethin' loose on, the way women do, and was all set for a good read. So the maid didn't think she could see Miss Blake, but anyhow she took in her card--and Mrs. Hunt decided to see her. That maid Iffley's an intelligent woman; she's all broke up, but she ain't hysterical like the cook--who didn't see nothin' anyway. The parlor maid was havin' her night off, but she's back now, too, and I've got 'em all safe where they can't talk to outsiders, yet. I don't want this thing in the papers to-morrow, not if I can help it; I want to keep it dark till I know better where I'm gettin' off."

"Right!" I approved. "What's the maid's story?"

"Well, I've questioned her pretty close, and I think it's to be relied on. It hits me that way. Mrs. Hunt, she says, when she took in Miss Blake's card, was lyin' on her couch in a long trailin' thing--what ladies call a negligee."

"Yes?"

"And she was cuttin' the pages of some new book with that paper-knife I spoke of."

"Yes?"

"And her dog, a runty little French bull, was sleepin' on the rug beside the couch."

"What does that matter?"

"More'n you'd think! He's got a broken leg--provin' some kind of a struggle must'a'----"

"I see. Go on!"

"Well, Mrs. Hunt, the maid says, looked at Miss Blake's card a minute and didn't say anythin' special, but seemed kind of puzzled. Her only words was, 'Yes, I ought to see her.' So the maid goes for Miss Blake and shows her to the door, which she'd left ajar, and taps on it for her, and Mrs. Hunt calls to come in. So Miss Blake goes in and shuts the door after her, and the maid comes back to this room we're in now--it's round the corner of the hall from Mrs. Hunt's room--see? But she don't much more than get here--just to the door--when she hears the dog give a screech and then go on cryin' like as if he'd been hurt. The cook was in here, too, and she claims she heard a kind of jarrin' sound, like somethin' heavy fallin'; but Iffley--that's the maid, they call her Iffley--says all she noticed was the dog. Anyway she listened a second, then she started for Mrs. Hunt's room--and the cook, bein' nervous, locked herself in here and sat with her eyes tight shut and her fingers in her ears. Fact. She says she can't bear nothin' disagreeable. Too bad about her, ain't it!"

"And then?" I protested, crossly.

"Well, Mr. Hunt, when the Iffley woman turned the hall corner--the door of your poor wife's room opens, and Miss Blake walks out. She had the paper-knife in her right hand, and the knife and her hand was all b.l.o.o.d.y; her left hand was b.l.o.o.d.y too; and we've found blood on her clothes since. There was a queer, vacant look about her--that's what the maid says. She didn't seem to see anythin'. Naturally, the maid was scared stiff--but she got one look in at the door anyway--that was enough for her. She was too scared even to yell, she says.

Paralyzed--she just flopped back against the wall half faintin'.

"And then she noticed somethin' that kind of brought her to again! Mr.

Hunt, that young woman, Miss Blake--she'd gone quiet as you please and curled herself down on a rug in the hallway--that b.l.o.o.d.y knife in her hand--and she was either dead or fast asleep! And then the doorbell rang, and the Iffley woman says she don't know how she got past that prostrate figger on the rug--her very words, Mr. Hunt--that prostrate figger on the rug--but she did, somehow; got to the door. And when she opened it, there was Doctor Askew and the elevator man. And then she pa.s.sed out. And I must say I don't much blame her, considerin'."

"Where's Miss Blake now?" I sharply demanded.

"She's still fast asleep, Mr. Hunt--to call it that. The doc says it's--somethin' or other--due to shock. Same as a trance."

I started up. "Where is Doctor Askew? I must see him at once!"

"We've laid Miss Blake on the bed in Mrs. Arthur's room. He's observin'

her."

"Take me there."

"I'll do that, Mr. Hunt. But I'll ask you a question first--straight. Is there any doubt in your mind that that young lady--your ward--killed Mrs. Hunt?"

I met his gray-blue glance directly, pausing a moment before I spoke.

"Sergeant Conlon," I replied, while a meteor-shower of speculation shot through me with the rapidity of light waves, "there is no doubt whatever in my mind: Miss Blake could not--and so did not--kill my wife."

"Who did, then?"

"Wait! Let me first ask you a question, sergeant: Who sent for Doctor Askew?"

"That's the queerest part of it; Miss Blake did."

"Ah! _How?_"

"There's a 'phone in Mrs. Hunt's sittin' room. Miss Blake called the house operator, gave her name and location, and said not to waste a moment--to send up a doctor double-quick!"

"Is that _all_ she said?"

"No. The operator tells me she said Mrs. Hunt had had a terrible accident and was dyin'."

"You're certain she said 'accident'?"

"The girl who was at the switchboard--name of Joyce--she's sure of it."

I smiled, grimly enough. "Then that is exactly what occurred, sergeant--a terrible accident; hideous. Your question is answered.

n.o.body killed Mrs. Hunt--unless you are so thoughtless or blasphemous as to call it an act of G.o.d!"

"Oh, come on now!" he objected, shaking his head, but not, I felt, with entire conviction. "No," he continued stubbornly, "I been turnin' that over too. But there's no way an accident like that could 'a' happened.

It's not possible!"

"Fortunately," I insisted, "nothing else is possible! Are you asking me to believe that a young, sensitive girl, with an extraordinary imaginative sympathy for others--a girl of brains and character, as all her friends have reason to know--asking me to believe that she walked coolly into my wife's room this evening, rushed savagely upon her, wrested a paper knife from her hand, and then found the sheer brute strength of will and arm to thrust it through her eye deep into her brain? Are you further asking me to believe that having done this frightful thing she kept her wits about her, telephoned at once for a doctor--being careful to call her crime an accident--and so pa.s.sed at once into a trance of some kind and walked from the room with the b.l.o.o.d.y knife in her hand? What possible motive could be strong enough to drive such a girl to such a deed?"

"Jealousy," said Sergeant Conlon. "She wanted _you_--and your wife stood in her way. That's what I get from Mrs. Arthur."

"I see. But the three or four persons who know Miss Blake and me best will tell you how absurd that is, and you'll find their reasons for thinking so are very convincing. Is Mr. Phar still about?"

"He is. I've detained him."

"What does he think of Mrs. Arthur's nonsensical theory?"

"He's got a theory of his own," said Conlon; "and it happens to be the same as mine."

"Well?"