of it--liked me! Three
evenings later I met her in the gardens of the hotel. We sat together
... alone for the first time. I struggled. My God, I struggled! But it
was useless. The white shape of her next to me--the dim outline of her
features--the whole nearness of her beauty.... Then it came on me, as I
knew it would--the final rush of irresistible hatred. When I knew myself
again ... she was lying on the ground ... smashed ... my first living
victim."

The woman sobbed.

"God forgive him!" she cried. "He was innocent himself. It wasn't really
him...."

Light footsteps moved across the floor.

"Let me be," said the voice hardly. "What God does with me is for God to
do. Sit down again."

The footsteps returned.

"I left her there, and went back to the hotel. I sat down in my room,
and analyzed my feelings. The madness had left me. My mind was perfectly
clear and steady. I felt no horror at what I had done--no remorse--only
a sense of impersonal regret at the death of an innocent woman, and a
faint detached pity for her misfortune in crossing my path. I carefully
considered my position, and certainty that there could be no evidence
against me dispelled any fears for myself--but my cold-blooded sanity
realized that the odds were tremendously against a recurrence of the
same good fortune, and that the avoidance of the opposite sex must
become the chief care of my life. Then I went to bed, and slept
soundly. The discovery of Colette d'Orsel's body early the next morning
provided the sensation of the year at Nice. The police were confounded.
There was no motive--no clue. It is an unsolved mystery to-day."

The callousness of the story was so revolting that even the inspector,
seasoned as he was, allowed a muttered expression of disgust to escape
him. But Monsieur Dupont remained as silent and still as the house
itself.

"Ten years later," continued the voice, "I went to America. For five
years I had been free from any return of the madness. You can imagine
the longing to be like other men--to presume on the years of immunity. I
felt unshakably sane. I even felt that I had never been mad. I gloried
in the keenness of my intellect, the absolute order and control of my
thoughts. What had I to do with madness? But in Boston ... I saw
Margaret McCall. In an instant I was mad. In an instant----"

A cry tore the air--a cry so awful in its inhuman fury that the two
listeners shrank back horrified. For a moment the room