an, and he volunteered some information
of the case in advance of your coming. I've forgotten just what he
called the form of insanity which has seized her--it's a jaw-breaking
Latin name--but anyhow, he said his preliminary diagnosis convinced him
that it must have been coming on her for some time; that it was marked
by delusions of persecution and by an exaggerated ego, causing its
victims to imagine themselves the objects of plots engineered by the
most distinguished personages, such as rulers and high dignitaries; and
that while in this state a man or a woman suffering from this particular
brand of lunacy was apt to shift his or her suspicion from one person to
another--first perhaps accusing some perfectly harmless and well-meaning
individual, who might be a relative or a near friend, and then nearly
always progressing to the point in his or her madness where the charge
was directed against some famous character."

"Did you hear anywhere any mention made of a daughter--the red-haired
child of twelve years ago?" inquired Miss Smith.

"To be sure I did, but I'd forgotten about her," said Mullinix. "Mrs.
Sheehan told me that somewhere in her excited narrative Mrs. Vinsolving
did say something about the daughter. As nearly as I can recall, she
told Mrs. Sheehan that five or six weeks ago, or some such matter, her
daughter had tried to kill her and that she thought then the daughter
had gone mad, but that now she knew the girl had joined the Kaiser's
gang for pay. I made a mental note of this part of the rigmarole at the
time Mrs. Sheehan was repeating it to me, and then it slipped my mind.
But now putting that yarn alongside of what Doctor Steele tells me about
the symptoms of the disease, I see the connection--first the daughter,
then the strange servant girl and finally the Kaiser. But say, I wonder
why the daughter hasn't been keeping some sort of a guard over the poor
demented creature? What can she have been thinking about herself to let
her mother go running foot-loose round the country, nursing these
changing delusions?"

"She couldn't very well help herself," put in Miss Smith. "The daughter
is in an asylum--put there five weeks ago on the mother's complaint."

"But heavens alive, how could that have happened?"

"Very easily--under the laws of this state," she answered grimly. Then
speaking more quickly: "I've changed my mind about going to Bellevue
with you. Please tell the driver to take me to the Grand C