d she held in her
hand--"is totally unfamiliar to me."

"I think you saw me some eighteen months ago," said I. "I am the
detective who gave testimony at the inquest which was held over the
remains of Mr. Hasbrouck."

I had not meant to startle her, but at this introduction of myself I saw
her naturally pale cheek turn paler, and her fine eyes, which had been
fixed curiously upon me, gradually sink to the floor.

"Great heaven!" thought I, "what is this I have stumbled upon!"

"I do not understand what business you can have with me," she presently
remarked, with a show of gentle indifference that did not in the least
deceive me.

"I do not wonder," I rejoined. "The crime which took place next door is
almost forgotten by the community, and even if it were not, I am sure
you would find it difficult to conjecture the nature of the question I
have to put to you."

"I am surprised," she began, rising in her involuntary emotion and
thereby compelling me to rise also. "How can you have any question to
ask me on this subject? Yet if you have," she continued, with a rapid
change of manner that touched my heart in spite of myself, "I shall, of
course, do my best to answer you."

There are women whose sweetest tones and most charming smiles only serve
to awaken distrust in men of my calling; but Mrs. Zabriskie was not of
this number. Her face was beautiful, but it was also candid in its
expression, and beneath the agitation which palpably disturbed her, I
was sure there lurked nothing either wicked or false. Yet I held fast by
the clue which I had grasped, as it were, in the dark, and without
knowing whither I was tending, much less whither I was leading her, I
proceeded to say:

"The question which I presume to put to you as the next-door neighbor of
Mr. Hasbrouck, is this: Who was the woman who screamed out so loudly
that the whole neighborhood heard her on the night of that gentleman's
assassination?"

The gasp she gave answered my question in a way she little realized,
and, struck as I was by the impalpable links that had led me to the
threshold of this hitherto unsolvable mystery, I was about to press my
advantage and ask another question, when she quickly started forward and
laid her hand on my lips.

Astonished, I looked at her inquiringly, but her head was turned aside,
and her eyes, fixed upon the door, showed the greatest anxiety.
Instantly I realized what she feared. Her husband was entering the
house, and