emained until in an
interview I had with her a half hour or so later I urged her, possibly
with too much insistence, for some explanation of the extreme agitation
she had shown at the time, when she broke forth with the remarkable
statement that it was not the child, but her husband, she was mourning,
stricken to death, as she would have us believe, simultaneously with the
young and innocent victim then lying dead at her feet.

"'Of course, such a coincidence was much too startling not to be regarded
by us all as the ravings of delirium; nor has anything occurred since in
the way of communication from, or in regard to the absent one, to show
that this so-called warning of death has been followed up by fact. But,
if you test her action by the theory I have just advanced, viz., that the
man she called husband was at that moment in the room with us and that
these words were a plea to him--the last appeal of a broken-hearted woman
for the support she felt to be her due--how the atmosphere of unreason
and mystery clears itself. His suggestion that what was needed there was
an alienist, and the pitiful efforts she made to exonerate herself
without implicating him in the murderous event, fall naturally into
place, as the action of a guilty man and the self-denying conduct of a
devoted woman.'"

"Romantic! too romantic!" objected the District Attorney. "I should think
we were listening to one of Dumas' tales."

"Dumas got his greatest effects from life, or so I have been told,"
remarked the Chief Inspector.

Mr. Gryce sat silent.

Suddenly, the District Attorney observed with the slightest tinge of
irony edging his tone:

"I presume you would find a like explanation for the messages she
professed to be sending to her husband, when engaged in babbling fool
words into the dead girl's ear."

"Certainly. He was there, mark you! He stood where he could both see and
hear her. All she said and all she did was by way of appeal to him for
some token of regret, some sign that he appreciated her reticence; and
when she found that it was bringing her nothing, she fainted away."

"Ingenious, very ingenious, Gryce. Had you failed to give us proofs
connecting this idol of the Republican party with the actual shooting,
it would have been simply ingenious and a quite useless expenditure
of talent. But we have these proofs, and while they are mainly
circumstantial, they undoubtedly call upon us for some recognition, and
so we will hear