to her feet by Mr. Rufus Van Torp, who must have been
following her closely. She seemed to have hurt herself a little,
and he almost carried her down the corridor in the direction of
the carriage lobby on the Thirty-Eighth Street side. The two then
disappeared through a door. The witness would swear to the door, and
he described its position accurately. It seemed to have been left
ajar, but there was no light on the other side of it. The witness did
not know where the door led to. He had often wondered. It was not
for the use of the public. He frequently went to the Opera and was
perfectly familiar with the corridors. It was behind this door that
Paul Griggs had found Miss Bamberger. Questioned as to a possible
motive for the murder, the witness stated that Rufus Van Torp was
known to have shown homicidal tendencies, though otherwise perfectly
sane. In his early youth he had lived four years on a cattle-ranch as
a cow-puncher, and had undoubtedly killed two men during that time.
Witness had been private secretary to his partner, Mr. Isidore
Bamberger, and while so employed Mr. Van Torp had fired a revolver at
him in his private office in a fit of passion about a message witness
was sent to deliver. Two clerks in a neighbouring room had heard the
shot. Believing Mr. Van Torp to be mad, witness had said nothing at
the time, but had left Mr. Bamberger soon afterwards. It was always
said that, several years ago, on board of his steam yacht, Mr. Van
Torp had once violently pulled a friend who was on board out of his
berth at two in the morning, and had dragged him on deck, saying that
he must throw him overboard and drown him, as the only way of saving
his soul. The watch on deck had had great difficulty in overpowering
Mr. Van Torp, who was very strong. With regard to the late Miss
Bamberger the witness thought that Mr. Van Torp had killed her to get
rid of her, because she was in possession of facts that would ruin him
if they were known and because she had threatened to reveal them to
her father. If she had done so, Van Torp would have been completely in
his partner's power. Mr. Bamberger could have made a beggar of him as
the only alternative to penal servitude. Questioned as to the nature
of this information, witness said that it concerned the explosion,
which had been planned by Van Torp for his own purposes. Either in a
moment of expansion, under the influence of the drug he was in the
habit of taking, or else in real