He wasn't, though. Nearly an hour passed before an attendant brought Magistrate Voris word that Officer Schwartzmann craved the privilege of seeing His Honour alone for a minute or two in His Honour's private chamber. The magistrate left the bench, suspending the business of the night temporarily, and went; on the way he was mentally fortifying himself to be severe enough if he caught a plain-clothes man trying to trifle with him. "Well, Schwartzmann?" he said shortly as he entered the room. "Judge," said the detective, "the woman wasn't lyin'. She told me her sister was sick alone in their flat without nobody to look after her and that her brother was dead. I don't know about the brother--at least I ain't sure about him--but the sister was sick. Only she ain't sick no more--she's dead." "Dead? What did she die of?" "She didn't die of nothin'--she killed herself with gas. She turned the gas on in the room where she was sick in bed. The body was still warm when I got there. I gave her first aid, but she was gone all right. She wasn't nothin' more than a shell anyhow--had some wastin' disease from the looks of her; and I judge it didn't take but a few whiffs to finish her off. I called in the officer on post, name of Riordan, and I notified the coroner's office myself over the telephone, and they're goin' to send a man up there inside of an hour or so to take charge of the case. "And so, after that, feelin' a sort of personal interest in the whole thing, as you might say, I broke the rules some more. When I found this here girl dead she had two pieces of paper in her hand; she'd died holdin' to 'em. One of 'em was a letter that she'd wrote herself, I guess, and the other must 'a' been a letter from somebody else--kind of an official-lookin' letter. Both of 'em was in French. I don't know exactly why I done it, unless it was I wanted to prove somethin' to myself, but I brought off them two letters with me and here they are, sir. I'm hopin' to get your court interpreter to translate 'em for me, and then I aim to rush 'em back over there before the coroner's physician gets in, and put 'em back on that bed where I found 'em." "I read French--a little," said the young magistrate. "Suppose you let me have a look at them first."