-" she murmured brokenly, "that I
should--seem to be thinking--only of myself. But--Monsieur de
Courtois--was the one man--who could save me. Now--I don't know--what
will become of me. How cruel is fate! If only--we could have been
married yesterday--perhaps this dreadful thing would not have happened."

Curtis, who had never been so mystified in his life, followed up those
last disjointed words as a man lost in a forest might cling to a path
in the certainty that it would lead somewhere. He rejected all else,
since the wild vagaries of events during the past few minutes were
beyond his comprehension. He waited, therefore, until the vehemence of
her grief had somewhat subsided, and then, with another friendly
pressure on her shoulder, he spoke with as much firmness as he thought
the situation demanded.

"Now, Miss Grandison, you must endeavor to regain self-control," he
said. "Monsieur de Courtois has been killed, and your--your friendship
for him--no less than the interests of justice--demand that those
responsible for his death should be discovered and punished."

At that, she raised her head, and lifted her swimming eyes to his, and
Curtis saw that they were blue, not violet, and that their hue changed
as the light irradiated their profound depths.

"He met with no accident, then, but was murdered?" she cried.

"Yes."

"And for my sake?"

"I gather from what you have said that that is possible."

"But what have I said?"

"Well, you seemed to hint that your marriage might have prevented this
crime."

"Why?"

No more exasperating monosyllable can fall from a woman's lips than
that one word "why," and Curtis felt its full force then and there.

"That is what I am asking you," he said, a trifle brusquely.

"But how can I tell you?" she cried.

"I am only striving vainly to pierce the fog which seems to envelop us.
Let me begin again. I, a mere stranger in New York, just three hours
landed from the _Lusitania_, witnessed a murderous attack on a young
man who was alighting from a cab in front of my hotel, the Central, in
West 27th Street. I saw him stabbed so seriously that he died within a
couple of minutes, and his assailants made off in an automobile, the
very vehicle, in fact, in which he arrived. I managed to note its
number, and I gathered, from instructions the victim himself had given,
that the chauffeur's Christian name was Anatole. The two men who
actually committed the murder--though