Then
the next morning, when the murder was discovered, she grew hysterical,
and I gave her some whisky. The third and last time I saw her, until
to-night, was when she crouched beside the road, after the wreck."

McKnight slid down in his chair until his weight rested on the small of
his back, and put his feet on the big reading table.

"It is rather a facer," he said. "It's really too good a situation for
a commonplace lawyer. It ought to be dramatized. You can't agree, of
course; and by refusing you run the chance of jail, at least, and of
having Alison brought into publicity, which is out of the question. You
say she was at the Pullman window when you were?"

"Yes; I bought her ticket for her. Gave her lower eleven."

"And you took ten?"

"Lower ten."

McKnight straightened up and looked at me.

"Then she thought you were in lower ten."

"I suppose she did, if she thought at all."

"But listen, man." McKnight was growing excited. "What do you figure out
of this? The Conway woman knows you have taken the notes to Pittsburg.
The probabilities are that she follows you there, on the chance of an
opportunity to get them, either for Bronson or herself.

"Nothing doing during the trip over or during the day in Pittsburg; but
she learns the number of your berth as you buy it at the Pullman ticket
office in Pittsburg, and she thinks she sees her chance. No one could
have foreseen that that drunken fellow would have crawled into your
berth.

"Now, I figure it out this way: She wanted those notes desperately--does
still--not for Bronson, but to hold over his head for some purpose. In
the night, when everything is quiet, she slips behind the curtains of
lower ten, where the man's breathing shows he is asleep. Didn't you say
he snored?"

"He did!" I affirmed. "But I tell you--"

"Now keep still and listen. She gropes cautiously around in the
darkness, finally discovering the wallet under the pillow. Can't you see
it yourself?"

He was leaning forward, excitedly, and I could almost see the gruesome
tragedy he was depicting.

"She draws out the wallet. Then, perhaps she remembers the alligator
bag, and on the possibility that the notes are there, instead of in
the pocket-book, she gropes around for it. Suddenly, the man awakes and
clutches at the nearest object, perhaps her neck chain, which breaks.
She drops the pocket-book and tries to escape, but he has caught her
right hand.

"It is all in silence; the ma