“Do you mean to tell me, Watson,” he said so low that no one but Watson heard him; “do you mean to tell me that you are not lying, putting your neck in the noose--to save your wife?” “No! No!” the denial was a shriek. “I killed him! I killed him for his money, I tell you!” He fell back, shivering. Lanagan drove in on him. “You lie, I tell you,” he hissed. “You lie! You fool! It’s bound to come out! Tell the truth!” “No, no,” moaned Watson. “I did it alone. God! I can feel his skull crunching yet!” “You’ve got more imagination than I credited you with,” sneered Lanagan savagely. “That last was a good touch.” There was a hustle as Quinlan and Pryor came through the prison gates from the detinue cells surrounded by an eager coterie of newspaper men. “We’ve got her, Inspector!” cried Quinlan with unprofessional feeling. “She’s ‘spilled.’ Killed him herself, and says her husband is lying if he says he did it. They’re both in it. We will have the whole thing now.” The woman was then brought out after her official statement had been taken. Nothing that the newspaper men could do could shake her story. In substance she said that she had worked on the old man for months to have the will made out in her husband’s favour. Knowing her husband was above such a deed, she planned and executed it alone. She had not had an opportunity to wash the hammer after she returned home, and only did so when the furor commenced. That was why it was still damp and why she had overlooked the two strands of incriminating gray hair. The newspaper camera men snapped and exploded flashes; the inquisitorial circle broke up, and Watson having been removed, the room was cleared of all save Henley, Mrs. Watson, and Lanagan. “Through?” asked Henley sarcastically. “No,” snapped Lanagan. “You say you killed this man. I say, Mrs. Watson, you’re a liar. You no more killed that man than I did. You are lying to save your husband!” His voice had risen; his aspect was fairly ferocious; his sallow face flushed to an unwholesome grey-blue; his eyes glowing again with that catlike phosphorescence that she had seen and quailed at once before. But again he was doomed to disappointment at a breakdown, for again under the shock she collapsed after half rising to her feet with evident purpose to give him the lie as violently as he gave it to her. Women, Lanagan reflected, are like electric wires. They are drawn to carry just so much voltage. A little overplus and they burn out. Each time he had bullied the woman just as her nerves were at the breaking point. The matron bustled in with a side compliment on Lanagan for his brutality, and lifted the limp form. Lanagan, bitterly chagrined at the events of the day, turned on his heel to return to San Francisco. On the ferry he broke a vow of six months and fell back on absinthe. He reached the office at seven o’clock, wrote steadily for two hours a story identical as he knew it would be with all the morning papers, and then went out.