"Here's the master key," he said, extending a key to Keane. "I got it from the manager. But--you're sure it is necessary to enter Madame Sin's rooms?" "Very," said Keane. "She is in now," said the president. "Could you--just to avoid possible scandal--inasmuch as you don't intend to knock before entering----" He glanced at Beatrice. Keane smiled. "I'll have Miss Dale go in first. If Madame Sin is undressed or--entertaining--Miss Dale can apologize and retreat. But I am sure Madame Sin will be unaware of intrusion. In spite of the conviction of your key clerk that she is in, I am quite sure that, at least figuratively, she is out." "_Figuratively_ out?" echoed Gest. "I don't understand." "You will later--unless this is my fated time to lose in the fight I have made against the devil who calls himself Doctor Satan. Are Chichester and Kroner in the hotel?" Gest shook his head. "Kroner is in the Turkish bath two blocks down the street. Chichester went home ten minutes ago." "Madame Sin will be unaware of intrusion," Keane repeated enigmatically and with seeming irrelevance. He turned to Beatrice, and the two went to the woman's rooms. * * * * * Keane softly closed Madame Sin's hall door behind him after Beatrice had entered first and reported that the woman was alone and in what seemed a deep sleep. At first, with a stifled scream, she had called out that Madame Sin was dead; then she had pronounced it sleep.... Keane went at once to the central figure of the living-room: the body of Madame Sin, on a chaise-lounge near the window. The woman was in a blue negligee, with her shapely legs bare and her arms and throat pale ivory against the blue silk. Her eyes were not quite closed. Her breast rose and fell, very slowly, almost like the breathing of a chloroformed person. Keane touched her bare shoulder. She did not stir. There was no alteration of the deep, slow breathing. He lifted one of her eyelids. The eye beneath stared blindly at him, the lid went nearly closed again at the cessation of his touch. "Trance," Keane said. "And the most profound one I have ever seen. It's about what I had expected." "I've seen her somewhere before," said Beatrice suddenly. Keane nodded. "You have. She is a movie extra, working now and then for the Long Island Picture Company. But I'm not much interested in this beautiful shell. For that's all she is at the moment--a shell, now emptied and unhuman. We'll look around. You give me your impressions as they come to you, and we'll see if they match mine."