h the firemen did. Apart from such outrages,
necessarily infrequent, the only intrusion was the morning paper and the
cat that talked in her sleep. The cat had many privileges, the paper had
few. Sometimes it was briefly considered, more often it was not even
looked at, but its great privilege consisted in being stacked.

On this morning Jones did look, but quite involuntarily, and only
because a headline caught his eye. It was the same headline from before
which Cassy backed. The leaping words shouted at the girl. They shouted
at the novelist, a circumstance which did not prevent him from
breakfasting.

The fruit, the crescents, the coffee he consumed, not as was customary,
with his thoughts on his own copy, but on that which the paper supplied.
It was very colourful. At the opera, the night before, Monty Paliser had
been killed.

In New York, many men are killed, but not so many are murdered and of
those that are murdered, few are millionaires and fewer still have a box
at the Metropolitan, where, apart from stage business, no one up to then
had been done for. The case was therefore unique and, save for the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln, without a parallel. In the
circumstances, the leaded line of leaping words was justified.

According to the story that followed and which, Jones realised, must
have reached the city editor just as the paper was going to press, an
attendant, whose duty it was to visit the boxes after the performance
and see what, if anything, the occupants had forgotten, had, on entering
Paliser's box, found him at the back of it, unconscious, on the floor.
There were no external marks of violence, but a commandeered physician
pronounced him dead and, on examination, further pronounced that death
was due to internal hemorrhage, superinduced by heart-puncture, which
itself had been caused by some instrument, presumably a stiletto.

A picturesque detail followed. The box at the right was owned by the
Leroy Thompsons. The box at the left was the Harriwells'. At the late
hour, an attempt to communicate with the former had failed, but over the
wire, Mr. Legrand Harriwell stated that the deceased had come in during
the third act, that he had spoken to Mrs. Harriwell, after which he had
moved back and had either gone, or remained in the rear of the box. Mr.
Harriwell knew nothing else, he had been unaware of anything occurring,
he was not in the habit of spying about and he wished it distinctly
unders