"Helen, think!" I cried, fighting blindly against the terror that was choking me. "Little sister. You must think--_hard_. Jim. Don't you remember big handsome Jim?" I snatched my watch from my pocket and opened the back, where I carried a small picture of Jim, taken years before. I had put it there in boyish admiration when I first knew him. I held it up in front of her eyes. "You must remember him, Helen!" She gazed at the picture with eyes in which there were tears and a little fright, but not a spark of recognition. Fearing that I was over-exciting her, I sat close to her and drew as best I could a mental picture of Jim. I was only half-way through the recital when the door opened and Doctor Forbes came in. "The ten minutes are up, Mr. Thompson." I stooped and kissed Helen. "Promise that you'll come back to-morrow," she whispered. I promised and hurried from the room. Outside the doctor awaited me questioningly. "Her memory is completely gone!" I gasped. The doctor patted me on the shoulder sympathetically. "We suspected that day before yesterday. I would have told you before, but thought that your questions might start her memory functioning." I gripped him by both arms. "But, Doctor, can nothing be done? Will she have to--have to begin all over again?" "I can't say yet. There may be some pressure there still. We'll have to wait until she is much stronger before we can tell." CHAPTER THIRTEEN WE PLAN THE DEFENSE Helen's loss of memory was the last straw. The shock of finding her unable to remember the most familiar things was bad enough from a purely physical standpoint, but when I realized how completely it swept away all my plans for Helen's defense, how it fastened the guilt on her poor shoulders, I felt that our case was hopeless indeed. I drove to the offices of Simpson and Todd and was lucky enough to find both of them in. Simpson, a slender man with steel-gray hair and eyes, at once ordered a closed session to thrash out the whole affair. He first made me repeat everything I knew about Jim's murder, from the beginning. Several times he interrupted me, to ask a question, but for the most part he sat with his back to me, gazing out of the window, the tips of his fingers to his lips. Half the time I thought he wasn't listening, until a quick question would show his interest. Todd, on the contrary, was the picture of attention. He took notes in shorthand most of the time I was talking. When I had finished, Simpson rose and came over to me.