life was extinct.

But while old Thomas was making his dash for the top of the stairs at
the elevated, the landlord, followed by a physician, tapped on the door
of the room Thomas Burton had left--and, receiving no response, the pair
went in. Swiftly the doctor labored, and as the powerful hypodermic
worked, the old woman rallied a little and her lids wavered and opened.
Her eyes wandered about the place and she spoke with a feeble voice.

"Who are you?"

"I am the doctor, but you mustn't try to talk," came the grave reply.

"Where are my children--my boys and my girl?" Elizabeth Burton's face
suddenly became a face of terror and her eyes dilated. "Where are my
children?" she once more demanded.

"There is no one here just now." The doctor spoke as soothingly as he
could. "You mustn't talk."

A spark of returned sanity crept into the dying woman's pupils and she
groaned. "No one here! I remember," she said while she shook with a
sudden realization. "I remember--they're all gone." Her gaze traveled
around the squalid room, and realized what that meant, too. "Am I
dying?" she inquired. The physician murmured something evasive, and from
her thin lips broke a low, smothered outcry. "Yes," she said, striving
to rise and falling back, "I'm dying--alone--abandoned--by myself--in
this attic."

Then her eyes closed. The physician bent over the bed with his fingers
on the pulse, and then bent his ear to the breast.

"We have nothing more to do here," he announced briefly, "except to
notify her daughter and the coroner. Have you the young woman's 'phone
number?"

The landlord nodded.

All of these scraps of information were received by Mr. Abey Lewis. He
had taken his place near the 'phone and stood sentinel there. But when
the second communication arrived he procured a pair of clippers from the
stage carpenter and quietly cut the connecting wire close to the wall
where it would not show. He was taking no imprudent chances.

* * * * *

Smitherton reached the theater early and stood for a while at the elbow
of the ticket-taker, watching the throngs crowd in. But at the
commencement of the performance he went inside and sat near the back of
the house. It was only when he knew that Mary's act was due in a few
minutes that he went behind. She might want just a word or smile of
encouragement at the final moment.

For Mary this had been a morning and afternoon of soul-trying torture
and s