interruption of the conversation.

He swept her with wondering eyes. She was not playing a part, not
concealing sorrow. The straight, hard lines of her lean figure were a
complement to her gleaming, unrevealing eyes. There was hardness about
her, and in her, everywhere.

A slow, warm breeze brought through the curtainless window a
disagreeable odour, sour and fetid. The apartment was at the back of the
building; the odour came from a littered courtyard, a conglomeration of
wet ashes, neglected garbage, little filthy pools, warmed into activity
by the sun, high enough now to touch them. He could see the picture
without looking--and that odour struck him as excruciatingly appropriate
to this woman's soul.

"Berne Webster killed my daughter," she said evenly, hands moveless in
her lap. "There are several reasons for my saying so. Mildred was his
stenographer for eight months, and he fell in love with her--that was
the way he described his feeling, and intention, toward her. The usual
thing happened; he discharged her two weeks ago.

"He wants to marry money. You know about that, I take it--Miss Sloane,
daughter of A. B. Sloane, Sloanehurst, where she was murdered. They're
engaged. At least, that is--was Mildred's information, although the
engagement hasn't been announced, formally. Fact is, he has to marry the
Sloane girl."

Her thin, mobile lips curled upward at the ends and looked a little
thicker, giving an exaggerated impression of wetness. Hastings thought
of some small, feline animal, creeping, anticipating prey--a sort of
calculating ferocity.

She talked like a person bent on making every statement perfectly clear
and understandable. There was no intimation that she was so
communicative because she thought she was obliged to talk. On the
contrary, she welcomed the chance to give him the story.

"Have you told all this to that sheriff, Mr. Crown?" he inquired.

"Yes; but he seemed to attach no importance to it."

She coloured her words with feeling at last--it was contempt--putting
the sheriff beyond the pale of further consideration.

"You were saying Mr. Webster had to marry Miss Sloane. What do you mean
by that, Mrs. Brace?"

"Money reasons. He had to have money. His bank balance is never more
than a thousand dollars. He's got to produce sixty-five thousand dollars
by the seventh of next September. This is the sixteenth of July. Where
is he to get all that? He's got to marry it."

Hastings put more