jewels. I have only my determination and an absolute conviction as
to the real nature of my husband's death."

"What is the name of the man you secretly believe to have shot your
husband from the trellis?"

Mrs. Hammond told her.

It was a new one to Violet. She said so and then asked:

"What else can you tell me about him?"

"Nothing, but that he is a very dark man and has a club-foot."

"Oh, what a mistake you've made."

"Mistake? Yes, I acknowledge that."

"I mean in not giving this last bit of information at once to the
police. A man can be identified by such a defect. Even his footsteps can
be traced. He might have been found that very day. Now, what have we to
go upon?"

"You are right, but not expecting to have any difficulty about the
insurance money I thought it would be generous in me to keep still.
Besides, this is only surmise on my part. I feel certain that my husband
was shot by another hand than his own, but I know of no way of proving
it. Do you?"

Then Violet talked seriously with her, explaining how their only hope
lay in the discovery of a second bullet in the room which had already
been ransacked for this very purpose and without the shadow of a result.

A tea, a musicale, and an evening dance kept Violet Strange in a whirl
for the remainder of the day. No brighter eye nor more contagious wit
lent brilliance to these occasions, but with the passing of the midnight
hour no one who had seen her in the blaze of electric lights would have
recognized this favoured child of fortune in the earnest figure sitting
in the obscurity of an up-town apartment, studying the walls, the
ceilings, and the floors by the dim light of a lowered gas-jet. Violet
Strange in society was a very different person from Violet Strange under
the tension of her secret and peculiar work.

She had told them at home that she was going to spend the night with a
friend; but only her old coachman knew who that friend was. Therefore a
very natural sense of guilt mingled with her emotions at finding
herself alone on a scene whose gruesome mystery she could solve only by
identifying herself with the place and the man who had perished there.

Dismissing from her mind all thought of self, she strove to think as he
thought, and act as he acted on the night when he found himself (a man
of but little courage) left in this room with an ailing child.

At odds with himself, his wife, and possibly with the child screaming
away in it