"Help me home and keep your mouth shut.... You see, this is my place; I've had it years; very handy--private entrance--all that.... Nella used to meet me here. That's how she came to have a key. I'd forgotten.... Well, I got tired of her, and she couldn't act, and Arlington was sore about that. So we planned to get rid of her. I guess you must've heard. It was a dirty business, all round.... And tonight, when her play went to pieces, just as we'd planned it should, she saw how she'd been bilked and lost her head.... Came here, let herself in quietly, without the maid's hearing her, and shot me when I came in with Joan. I managed to get the gun away before she could turn it on herself, and locked her up. Then--hysterics.... Well, I'm finished. I asked for it, and got it.... No: no remorse bunk, no deathbed repentance, nothing like that! But I realize I've been a pretty rotten proposition, first and last. Never mind.... What I'm getting at's this: nobody need suffer but me. That's where _you_ come in. For Venetia's sake. You and Arlington and the doctor can cover it all up between you. Arlie can quiet that girl--Joan--and the doctor's all right; he'll want a pretty stiff cheque to fix the undertaker--and that's all right, too. Then you've got to scare Nella Cardrow so's she won't give herself away, and buy my chauffeur and that maid out there, Sara.... But first off, you'll have to help doctor get me home and in bed. I'm the sort that's got to die in the house." His chin dropped again. "Well ... I guess it's a good job ... at that...." He shivered. The hall-door opened and Arlington entered, followed by a lean man with worried eyes who proved to be the doctor. XXXIX Shortly before seven o'clock, that same morning, a limousine car pulled up quietly just short of the corner of Madison Avenue, and its occupant, with a word on alighting to his driver, addressed himself briskly to the door of the ground-floor flat. He was a handsome, well dressed, well-set-up and well-nourished animal of something more than middle-age: a fact which the pitilessly clear light of early morning betrayed, discovering lines and hollows in his clean-shaven countenance which would ordinarily have escaped notice. But he had passed that time of life when he could suffer a sleepless night of anxiety without visibly paying for it. His intention to announce himself by ringing the bell was promptly anticipated, the door opening before his finger could touch the button. He checked momentarily in obvious surprise, then jauntily lifted his hat as he stepped hurriedly inside. "Why, my dear!" he addressed the woman who held the door--"up so early!" "I haven't been to bed, of course, Mr. Arlington," Joan informed him. "Well," he observed, not without envy, "you don't look it." "I've been packing all night," she returned. "Of course--I can't stay here, after what's happened." "Of course not," he agreed sympathetically.