But Sylvia saw. In face and manner his excitement was obvious. Mindful of that episode she feared that he was again in his cups. Yet immediately, though for a moment, a question which he asked rea.s.sured her. She understood, or thought she did, why he had come.

"Did you know that you had lost your pearls?"

Instinctively the girl's hand went to her throat.

"Here they are. They were found somewhere. In the hall, I think."

"Thank you, Arthur. This is very good of you. But tomorrow would have done."

She did not ask him in and this omission he did not appear to notice.

He looked about the hall and then at the girl. At the look her fear returned.

"Did you know about f.a.n.n.y and Loftus?" he suddenly asked. "They're going to elope." As he spoke he leaned back heavily against the door.

"I shall kill him," he added thickly.

Sylvia wrung her hands. "Oh, Arthur, you have been drinking again. You promised that you never would."

"I shall kill him," Annandale stubbornly repeated.

"Oh, don't say such things," the girl pleaded. "Don't say them. Go home."

Annandale turned sullenly, opened the door and looking back, muttered, "I have no home."

Closing the door after him he started down the steps. They were few and wide, easy of descent. But they had become unaccountably steep. He caught at a rail. It steadied him. He stood there a moment. Then, a bit uncertainly, he zigzagged on.

CHAPTER V

EXIT f.a.n.n.y

"Murder!"

On the morrow, through the thick streets newsboys were shouting the word engagingly, as though it were something nice. For further temptation they bawled, "In Gramercy Park!"

Orr was leaving his office. It was four o'clock. He was on his way home. But the name detained him. Murder in Gramercy Park was a novelty which no one aware of its sedateness could comfortably resist. He bought an extra. There, for his penny, in leaded type it stood. In ink, appropriately red, meagre details followed. As these sprang at him, mentally he bolted. Other purchasers were absorbing them pleasurably. A good old-fashioned crime is so rare! Then, too, of all crimes murder in Gramercy Park is rarest. Yet when in addition the victim is a man of fashion what more would you have for a cent?

To Orr the information was excessive. It concerned Royal Loftus, who, the paper stated, had been found early that morning, near a bench in the park, doubled in a heap, a bullet through his handsome head.

No clues, no arrests. That was all. But was it not enough? To Orr, while excessive it was also incredible. Mechanically he read the account again. On his way uptown he bought other papers, less colorful but equally clear. Loftus had been identified. There was no mistake.

But the incredibility of it persisted. A man young, rich, handsome, without apparently an enemy in the world or an idea in his head, to be done for like that was a matter which Orr could not immediately digest.

He tried, however. In the effort he reached his house. There a telephone message awaited him. It asked would he please come to Irving Place. Presumably it concerned the murder. He went at once.

In the sombre parlor Sylvia stood.

"You know, I suppose," he began. Seeing that she did he added, "It is very odd."

Sylvia interrupted him. "There is worse."

"How worse? What do you mean?"

"f.a.n.n.y was going to run off with him."

"With Loftus?"

Sylvia nodded. Her face, always pale, now was white.

"But," Orr expostulated, "you don't fancy that Annandale----?"

"No." The monosyllable fell longly from the girl. "No," she repeated.

"But others may."

"I don't see why. There is nothing to go on. Is there though?"

Sylvia did not directly reply. She looked down at her hands and then at her cousin. "I think," she presently said, "that he must have learned of it last evening after we went away. At dinner I am sure he had no suspicions."

"Had you any?"

Sylvia raised her eyebrows. "I don't know," she remarked, "whether when you were going from here you noticed him particularly, but in the hall he had told her that he would shoot him."

Orr sniffed. "That is rather awkward."

"Then almost at once he went. But where?"

"Have you heard from him since?"

"No, and it is for that reason I sent for you. Won't you go to him and let me know?"

But Orr did not like the errand. It seemed to him that Annandale might be the man. "That, too, is rather awkward," he objected.

Against the objection Sylvia pleaded. Manifestly she was nervous. "If you won't go," she said at last, "I shall."

"Oh, well, if you put it in that way," Orr reluctantly replied, "I suppose I must."

"And you will come back?"

"As quickly as I can."

There is a line of Hugo descriptive of the earnestness with which people gape at a wall behind which something has occurred. Orr recalled it when he reached Gramercy Park. At one end of the park was a great crowd staring at the high fence of iron. It was behind the fence that Loftus had been found. The place itself was directly in front of Annandale's house.

On entering that house Orr was shown into the drawing-room. Shortly, from a room beyond, Annandale appeared.

"You have heard, have you not?" he asked. "But come in here."