the truth. It is my painful duty to
place you under arrest."

"On what charge?" I demanded hotly.

"For complicity in Robert Ashton's murder," he replied, and placed his
hand upon my shoulder.

I spent a dreary enough night, nor was I able to close my eyes in sleep.
I sat up in the library through the long hours, sometimes talking with
McQuade, who dozed upon a couch, but for the most part engaged in
interminably revolving in my mind the maddening problem of Robert
Ashton's death. I had begun to regard it as almost supernatural in its
mysterious and devious phases. I thought of all the detective stories I
had ever read and tried to piece out some points of resemblance, some
similar events, which would serve as a starting point for a solution,
but I could find none. In all these cases, the various clews led
somewhere, but here they led to nothingness. There remained but Miss
Temple's story, and that, like all the rest, I feared would fail to
prove a solution of the mystery. That she herself was guilty and that
her story would be in the nature of a confession, I refused to consider.
I loved her and I could no more believe her guilty than I could have
believed myself so; yet I could not help remembering the advice of the
witty Frenchman: _cherchez la femme_--seek the woman. The thing seemed
monstrous, yet it persisted all through the long night.

I must have dozed, toward morning, for I dreamed that I was alone upon a
wide field of ice, running madly forward toward a dim light that
constantly receded as I approached it, and followed by a pack of hungry
wolves. Their yelps and cries filled me with dread. I awoke trembling,
and listened. Far off I heard the mournful howling of a dog, a series of
low, unearthly howls, that would die slowly away only to be once more
repeated. It seemed like the moaning of an animal in great pain.
Presently, as I listened, there came a great yelp, and thereafter
silence. After this I slept. About seven o'clock coffee was brought to
us, and a little later we set out for the town.

We walked in, and did the short distance in less than twenty minutes. On
arrival, we went at once to the headquarters of the police, where I
made my first acquaintance with the interior of a cell. McQuade informed
me that I would be taken before the Magistrate for a hearing at ten
o'clock, and suggested that I had better employ counsel, but this I
refused to do. I had made up my mind to tell the whole story as si