say anything of what I
had seen. This was what they meant; this was the meaning of the
carriage, the alley and the back door of the prison; all my part in the
business had been kept secret. I wondered what in the world Hallie
could have thought of my behavior last night, but I was greatly
relieved to think of the fusillade of questions I had escaped. I
managed to get out something about father's having heard a shot.

"Of course I know that," Hallie said, pulling me down on the sofa
beside her. She was too full of her subject to notice how oddly I must
have looked. "It's all in the paper, how they found him--Mr. Rood, I
mean."

"It's here," Estrella said, sitting down on the other side of me, and
unfolding the crumpled sheet she had been carrying rolled up in her
hand. She and Hallie held it stretched out in front of me.

The sight of Johnny Montgomery's name staring at me from the page made
my heart beat a little. But when I began reading down the column I
couldn't seem to make sense of it. The only thing that stood out in
the jumble was a name nearly at the bottom of the sheet, Carlotta
Valencia. It gave me a queer little stir of feeling, merely seeing
that name under his. Keeping my finger on it, "Who is that?" I asked.

"Oh, don't you know?" Hallie demanded, looking surprised, but delighted
at the chance of giving more information. "That is the Spanish Woman."
Estrella crossed her arms on her waist, and drew herself up, exactly as
her mother does when she thinks some one is beneath her. "You see,"
Hallie went on, explaining a little more to me, "she was--well, a sort
of friend of Mr. Rood's, and the paper says she feels dreadfully about
him!" Estrella sniffed.

"But," I cried, "you said last night that the shooting had been over
her."

"Yes, I know!" Hallie leaned forward impressively and seized a hand of
each of us. "It's perfectly true--at least it's what my father said
when the news came. He said, 'That confounded Valencia woman is at the
bottom of this, depend upon it.' But your father was very angry that I
had spoken of it, so of course I'm telling you this in strictest
confidence. The paper," Hallie went on, we both listening with open
eyes, "doesn't say the Spanish Woman had anything to do with the
shooting. So you see, no one does know exactly what it's about. It's
really the most mysterious thing! They found Mr. Rood lying there
quite dead," she continued breathlessly, "and they