s
important--much more important than you think! Come on for me, I'll be
waiting."

When fifteen minutes later the perplexed Mullinix halted a taxi at the
Deansworth Studio Building she was at the curbing, her left arm in a
sling and her eyes ablaze with barely controlled emotions. Before he
could move to get out and help her in she was already in.

"Bellevue Hospital, psychopathic ward," he told the driver as she
climbed nimbly inside.

As the taxi started she turned to Mullinix, demanding: "Now tell it to
me all over again. When you are through, then I'll explain to you why I
am so interested."

"Well," he said, "there isn't so very much to tell. The address you gave
me turned out to be a boarding house just as you suspected it might--a
second-rate place but apparently highly respectable, kept by a Mrs.
Sheehan. It's been under the same management at the same place for a
good many years. It wasn't very much trouble for me to find out what
you wanted to know, because the whole place was in turmoil after what
had happened just an hour or so before I got there. And when it
developed that I had come to inquire about the cause of all the
excitement every old-lady boarder in the house wanted to tell me about
it all at the same time.

"It seems that three days ago this Mrs. Vinsolving applied at the place
for room and board. Mrs. Sheehan vaguely remembered her as having been
her guest for a short time ten or twelve years ago. At that time she was
with her husband, Colonel Vinsolving, who it appears has since died, and
a daughter about ten years or twelve years of age--a little girl with
red hair, as Mrs. Sheehan recalls. This time, though, she came alone,
carrying only hand baggage. Except that she seemed to be nervous and
rather harassed and unhappy looking, there was nothing noticeably
unusual about her. Mrs. Sheehan took her in willingly enough.

"She went straight to her room on the third floor and stayed there,
having her meals brought up to her. But this morning early she went to
the landlady and begged for protection, saying she was in fear of her
life. Mrs. Sheehan very naturally inquired to know what was up--and then
Mrs. Vinsolving told her this story:

"She said she had discovered a conspiracy to murder her, headed
by--guess who? The late Kaiser, no less! She said that the Kaiser in
disguise had escaped from Holland, leaving behind him in his recent
place of exile over there a double made up to look like