"

"He caught me, Helen," Reed said with dry lips.

She flung up her hands.

"What do you mean? Oh, my God! What do you mean?"

The policeman came briskly up. Nora followed him, her eyes wide and
uncertain.

"Everything is accounted for," Garth said to the policeman. "Make your
arrest."

Reed stepped forward, offering himself.

"I admire you, Reed," Garth said, "but your devotion can't do any more
for her. Mrs. Taylor! I don't want you to get excited. This man must
take you--just a form, you know--for the murder of your husband and for
the attack on McDonald."

The violent rage Garth had feared flamed in her eyes.

"I did kill him. He kept me locked up for more than two months, because
I didn't love him."

She commenced to struggle in the grasp of the policeman. Abruptly she
went limp and her efforts ceased. Garth nodded with satisfaction.

"That's better. She's fainted. Carry her to her room. We'll have a
doctor right away to go down town with her."

Reed touched his arm timidly. His husky voice was scarcely audible.

"I understand now. Once or twice this afternoon I've wondered, but she
told me that Taylor had lied, that she had never been to California,
that he had kept her a prisoner here because in his sick, morbid way he
was jealous of me. In any case I would have done anything to help her
over the next day or two, for you must understand I've loved her very
deeply and for a long time--"

Garth turned away, because he didn't care to see the man's tears.

Later the humility of Nora's interest amused Garth. He told her frankly
how the pivotal pieces of the puzzle had been within reach long before
Reed had tried in Mrs. Taylor's service to recover and destroy the
tell-tale black gown.

"Those sedatives in Taylor's bathroom," he said. "The man's perpetual
questioning of his doctor about the symptoms and the treatment of
insanity, the moans which frightened the other servants without
affecting McDonald or his daughter, the old lady's exaggeration of her
eccentricities to draw my attention from Mrs. Taylor--any of these clues
ought to have reminded us, Nora, of the hundreds of similar cases in New
York of fond relatives who, through a mistaken pride, hide and treat in
their own homes such cases of mental disorder."

He scarcely needed to outline for her the picture, filled in by the old
lady, of that black hour last night in the melancholy house, when Mrs.
Taylor had tricked McDonald's daughter--a