They had reached the hospital in fifteen minutes. Dr. MacDougal had met them at the door of Dr. Steuer's room and informed them that the news of her friend's predicament had been broken to the patient, after administering stimulants, and that she had consented immediately to make a statement. "It took her some time to make this statement," continued Mr. Rush. "She was very weak, and stimulants had to be given repeatedly. But in due course it was completed, signed, and witnessed by Mr. Broderick and the two physicians present. I shall read it to you with the permission of the court." He then read them the ante-mortem statement of Dr. Anna Steuer: "I shot David Balfame. "I make this statement at once lest I prove to be unable to add the explanation of my motives, and I herewith sign it." Signed and witnessed. The statement continued: "I had known for a long time that my beloved friend's life with this wretch was insupportable, but although I urged her repeatedly to divorce him and she refused, it never entered my head to kill him nor any one else. I had spent my life trying to heal, and to give comfort where my patient's sufferings were of the mind as well as of the body. I had carried Balfame through several gastric attacks, caused by his disreputable life, with as much professional enthusiasm as if he had been the best of husbands. To have removed him during one of these would have been a simple matter. "But that day out at the Country Club when he insulted the loveliest and most nearly perfect being on this earth, with the deliberate intent to ruin her position--the little all she had in the world that mattered--something snapped in my head. I almost struck him then and there. And when, during the ride home, Enid for the first time told me the hideous details of her life with that man all the blood in my body seemed to surge up and through my brain. He deserved death, and only death could free her. But how could this be accomplished? Too proud and too obdurate in her principles for the divorce-court, she was also too gentle and good and fastidious, in spite of her remarkable will, to strike him down herself. "While waiting for a summons to the Houston farm, I paid several calls, and the last was at the Cummacks', one of the children being ill. As I came downstairs from the nursery I heard the conversation at the telephone--Balfame's drunken compliment to his wife. He said he would walk home. It was then that the definite impulse came to me, and I acted without an instant's hesitation. I always carried a revolver, for I was forced to take many long and lonely rides in my country practice. I drove straight to the lane behind the Balfame place, left the car, put out the lights, and climbed the back fence. It was very dark, but I had been familiar with the grounds all my life and I had no difficulty in finding the grove. I waited, moving about restlessly, for I wanted to have it over and go out to the Houston farm.