steps, the lap robe over his arm.

Laura gave orders to have the victoria call for her at three, and ran
quickly up the front steps. The front entrance was open, the screen
door on the latch, and she entered without ceremony.

"Mrs. Cressler!" she called, as she stood in the hallway drawing off
her gloves. "Mrs. Cressler! Carrie, have you gone yet?"

But the maid, Annie, appeared at the head of the stairs, on the landing
of the second floor, a towel bound about her head, her duster in her
hand.

"Mrs. Cressler has gone out, Mrs. Jadwin," she said. "She said you was
to make yourself at home, and she'd be back by noon."

Laura nodded, and standing before the hatrack in the hall, took off her
hat and gloves, and folded her veil into her purse. The house was
old-fashioned, very homelike and spacious, cool, with broad halls and
wide windows. In the "front library," where Laura entered first, were
steel engravings of the style of the seventies, "whatnots" crowded with
shells, Chinese coins, lacquer boxes, and the inevitable sawfish bill.
The mantel was mottled white marble, and its shelf bore the usual
bronze and gilt clock, decorated by a female figure in classic
draperies, reclining against a globe. An oil painting of a mountain
landscape hung against one wall; and on a table of black walnut, with a
red marble slab, that stood between the front windows, were a
stereoscope and a rosewood music box.

The piano, an old style Chickering, stood diagonally across the far
corner of the room, by the closed sliding doors, and Laura sat down
here and began to play the "Mephisto Walzer," which she had been at
pains to learn since the night Corthell had rendered it on her great
organ in the art gallery.

But when she had played as much as she could remember of the music, she
rose and closed the piano, and pushed back the folding doors between
the room she was in and the "back library," a small room where Mrs.
Cressler kept her books of poetry.

As Laura entered the room she was surprised to see Mr. Cressler there,
seated in his armchair, his back turned toward her.

"Why, I didn't know you were here, Mr. Cressler," she said, as she came
up to him.

She laid her hand upon his arm. But Cressler was dead; and as Laura
touched him the head dropped upon the shoulder and showed the bullet
hole in the temple, just in front of the ear.

X

The suicide of Charles Cressler had occurred on the tenth of June, and
the repor