replied. "But if you
referred to my answering any of your questions, it is no chance at
all. We have gone under, and I know it. I am not complaining; it's
all in the game. There's a clear enough case against us, and I am
sorry"--suddenly, unexpectedly, her eyes became filled with tears,
which coursed down her cheeks, leaving little wakes of blackness from
the make-up upon her lashes. Her lips trembled, and her voice shook.
"I am sorry I let him do it. He'd never done anything--not anything
big like this--before, and he never would have done if he had not
met me...."

The look of perplexity upon Smith's face was increasing with every
word that the girl uttered.

"You don't seem to know me," she continued, her emotion growing
momentarily greater, "and I don't know you; but they will know me at
Bow Street. I urged him to do it, when he told me about the box to-day
at lunch. He said that if it contained half as much as the Kuren
treasure-chest, we could sail for America and be on the straight all
the rest of our lives...."

And now something which had hitherto been puzzling me became suddenly
evident. I had not removed the wig worn by the dead man, but I knew
that he had fair hair, and when in his last moments he had opened his
eyes, there had been in the contorted face something faintly familiar.

"Smith!" I cried excitedly, "it is Lewison, Meyerstein's clerk! Don't
you understand? don't you understand?"

Smith brought his teeth together with a snap and stared me hard in
the face.

"I do, Petrie. I have been following a false scent. I do!"

The girl in the chair was now sobbing convulsively.

"He was tempted by the possibility of the box containing treasure," I
ran on, "and his acquaintance with this--lady--who is evidently no
stranger to felonious operations, led him to make the attempt with her
assistance. But"--I found myself confronted by a new problem--"what
caused his death?"

"His ... _death_!"

As a wild, hysterical shriek the words smote upon my ears. I turned,
to see the girl rise, tottering, from her seat. She began groping in
front of her, blindly, as though a darkness had descended.

"You did not say he was dead?" she whispered, "not dead!--not ..."

The words were lost in a wild peal of laughter. Clutching at her
throat she swayed and would have fallen had I not caught her in my
arms. As I laid her insensible upon the settee I met Smith's glance.

"I think I know that, too, Petrie," he said