t significance had been possible by its use. But the door
was locked, and she had no key.

Above her the warehouse raised its empty height, and it was not long
before she decided to see what she could learn from its upper windows.
She went in at the gate and felt her way, through the rain, to the
windows. At that moment the gate opened suddenly, and a man muttered
something in the darkness. The shock was terrible.

I had no idea, that night, of what my innocent stumbling into the
warehouse yard had meant to a half-crazed woman just beyond my range of
vision. After a little she got her courage again, and she pried up an
unlocked window.

The rest of her progress must have been much as ours had been, a few
nights later. She found a window that commanded the club, and with three
possibilities that she would lose, and would see the wrong room, she won
the fourth. The room lay directly before her, distinct in every outline,
with Fleming seated at the table, facing her and sorting some papers.

She rested her revolver on the sill and took absolutely deliberate aim.
Her hands were cold, and she even rubbed them together, to make them
steady. Then she fired, and a crash of thunder at the very instant
covered the sound.

Fleming sat for a moment before he swayed forward. On that instant she
realized that there was some one else in the room--a man who took an
uncertain step or two forward into view, threw up his hands and
disappeared as silently as he had come. It was Schwartz. Then she saw
the door into the hall open, saw Wardrop come slowly in and close it,
watched his sickening realization of what had occurred; then a sudden
panic seized her. Arms seemed to stretch out from the darkness behind
her, to draw her into it. She tried to get away, to run, even to
scream--then she fainted. It was gray dawn when she recovered her senses
and got back to the hotel room she had taken under an assumed name.

By night she was quieter. She read the news of Fleming's death in the
papers, and she gloated over it. But there was more to be done; she was
only beginning. She meant to ruin Schwartz, to kill his credit, to fell
him with the club of public disfavor. Wardrop had told her that her
husband's letters were with other papers at the Monmouth Avenue house,
where he could not get them.

Fleming's body was taken home that day, Saturday, but she had gone too
far to stop. She wanted the papers before Lightfoot could get at them
and dest