"It isn't," Matthias insisted curtly. "I'm not on sufficiently friendly terms with Mr. Marbridge for him to send for me without explanation." "Yes, sir; but you see, part of my job is to keep my mouth shut." "I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to forget that duty to some extent, or else stop the car and let me out." "Very good, sir. I don't suppose I can do any harm telling what little I know. After supper tonight, Mr. Marbridge told me to take the car to the garage and not to expect a call for it until sometime tomorrow morning; but when I got there, he was already wanting me on the telephone. He said there'd been an accident, and told me to find Mr. Arlington first and then you, and ask you to come immediately." "But why me?" Matthias asked, more of himself than of the driver. "He didn't say, sir." "Did he state what sort of an accident?" "No, sir." "You found Mr. Arlington?" "No, sir; he wasn't in when I asked at his hotel. But I left a message before coming on for you." Matthias sat up with a start. Instead of turning up Broadway the man was steering his car straight across Longacre Square. Before he had time to comment on this fact they were speeding on toward Sixth Avenue. "Look here," he cried, "you're not taking me to Mr. Marbridge's home!" "No, sir." "But--" "Mr. Marbridge hadn't gone home when he telephoned me, sir." "Where is he, then?" "We'll be there in a minute, sir--an apartment house on Madison Avenue." "Oh!" said Matthias thoughtfully. "Was Mr. Marbridge--ah--alone when you left him tonight?" "I'd rather not say, sir, if you don't mind." Troubled by an inkling of the disaster, Matthias composed himself to patience. Turning south on Fifth Avenue, the car passed Thirty-fourth Street before swinging eastward again. It stopped, eventually, in the side street, just short of the corner of Madison Avenue, before a private entrance to a ground-floor apartment, such as physicians prefer. But Matthias could discern no physician's name-plate upon the door at which his guide knocked, or in either of the flanking windows. Opening, the door disclosed a panelled entry tenanted by a white-lipped woman in the black and white uniform of a lady's-maid. Her frightened eyes examined Matthias apprehensively as he entered, followed by the chauffeur. This last demanded briefly: "Doctor been?" The maid assented with a nervous nod: "Ten minutes ago, about. He's with the lady now--" "Lady!" the chauffeur echoed. "But I thought it was Mr. Marbridge--" "I mean the other lady," the maid explained--"the one what done the shooting. When Mr. Marbridge got the gun away from her, he locked her up in the bathroom, and then she had hysterics. The doctor's trying to make her hush, so's she won't disturb the other tenants, but.... You can hear yourself how she's carrying on." In a pause that followed, Matthias was conscious of the sound of high-pitched and incessant laughter, slightly muffled, emanating from some distant part of the flat.