roy the incriminating ones. That night she got into the Fleming
house, using the key she had taken. She ransacked the library, finding,
not the letters that Wardrop had said were there, but others, equally or
more incriminating, canceled notes, private accounts, that would have
ruined Schwartz for ever.

It was then that I saw the light and went down-stairs. My unlucky
stumble gave her warning enough to turn out the light. For the rest, the
chase through the back hall, the dining-room and the pantry, had
culminated in her escape up the back stairs, while I had fallen down the
dumb-waiter shaft. She had run into Bella on the upper floor, Bella, who
had almost fainted, and who knew her and kept her until morning, petting
her and soothing her, and finally getting her into a troubled sleep.

That day she realized that she was being followed. When Edith's
invitation came she accepted it at once, for the sake of losing herself
and her papers, until she was ready to use them. It had disconcerted her
to find Margery there, but she managed to get along. For several days
everything had gone well: she was getting stronger again, ready for the
second act of the play, prepared to blackmail Schwartz, and then expose
him. She would have killed him later, probably; she wanted her measure
full and running over, and so she would disgrace him first.

Then--Schwartz must have learned of the loss of the papers from the
Fleming house, and guessed the rest. She felt sure he had known from the
first who had killed Fleming. However that might be, he had had her room
entered, Margery chloroformed in the connecting room, and her papers
were taken from under her pillow while she was pretending anesthesia.
She had followed the two men through the house and out the kitchen door,
where she had fainted on the grass.

The next night, when she had retired early, leaving Margery and me
down-stairs, it had been an excuse to slip out of the house. How she
found that Schwartz was at the White Cat, how she got through the side
entrance, we never knew. He had burned the papers before she got there,
and when she tried to kill him, he had struck her hand aside.

When we were out in the cheerful light of day again, Burton turned his
shrewd, blue eyes on me.

"Awful story, isn't it?" he said. "Those are primitive emotions, if you
like. Do you know, Knox, there is only one explanation we haven't worked
on for the rest of this mystery--I believe in my soul you