he
had killed a woman--but from that time only a woman's beauty would
satisfy him. The attacks became few and far between, but when they came
he would have died with the very force of his madness if he had not had
some representation of a beautiful woman to expend it on."

"It's frightful--incredible," the inspector exclaimed.

"It was all the more pitiful," she said, "because his sanity was so
wonderful. He had a towering intellect. He succeeded in anything he put
his hand to."

"He was looked upon as one of the greatest authorities on finance in the
country," said the inspector.

"He could have been a Member of Parliament before he was thirty if he
had cared for politics. He refused a title. To be a Privy Councillor was
the only honor he accepted. And he--one of England's great men--came to
my little house at Streatham to gratify his madness to destroy."

She looked round at them defiantly, anger displacing the sorrow on her
face.

"But he was not guilty," she declared. "His hands may have killed those
three women--but he was not guilty. Nor was that poor innocent woman,
his mother, who died in the madhouse. They were both clean of sin. It
was on his wicked father that the guilt lay. It was Oscar Winslowe who
was responsible for the lives that have fallen to his sins. Oscar
Winslowe, and no one else."

"I bear witness to that," agreed Doctor Lessing. "Mary Winslowe was the
gentlest, the sweetest, and the most patient woman that ever walked this
earth, as you will see when I tell you my story. And he was the biggest
blackguard that ever blasphemed the likeness of his Maker."

"It is true," said the woman.

She drew back in her chair, and pressed a hand to her forehead.

"That is all I have to tell you," she concluded.

"Last night," said Monsieur Dupont, "I called at your house, and was
told by the lady who lives next door that you had left in a hurry two
hours before."

"Yes," she said.

"I presume that you did so on instructions from Tranter?"

"Yes."

"Evidently he shadowed me to Paddington Station, as I expected he would,
and decided to remove you in case I should get on the right track."

"He sent me an urgent message," she said, "saying that a great disaster
hung over his head, and that I must go away without leaving any trace.
He told me where to go, and promised to come to me and explain."

"He knew that it was only you who could give any proof against him?"

"After forty years," she retu