"Gott!" The girl's face was almost purple. She raised her knitting needles with a threatening gesture that was almost dramatic. "I did not do it. She has done it." "What were you doing on the stairs?" "I would heat water for my tooth." "Cold water is the thing for an ulcerated tooth." "I never have the toothache like that already. I am in my room many minutes before I think I go down. Then, when I am on the stairs I hear Mrs. Balfame come in." "She has explained what you heard." "No, she have not. I think so when we have talked this evening, but not now. She is--was, I mean, all out of her breath." "I was terrified." Mrs. Balfame retorted so promptly that Rush flashed her a glance of admiration. Here was a woman who could take care of herself on the witness stand. "First I thought I heard some one trying to get into the door, and then some one sneaking up the stairs." "Oh--yes." Frieda's tones expressed no conviction. "The educated lady can think very quick. But I say that she have come in by the door, the kitchen door. Always I take the key to the hall door. She know that, and as she not know that I am in, she go out by the kitchen door. Always in the daytime when she goes to the yard she go by the hall door." "What a pity you did not slam the door when you came in. It would have been quite natural as you were in such agony." Rush spoke sarcastically, but he was deeply perturbed. It was impossible to tell whether the girl was telling the truth or a carefully rehearsed story. "Of course you know that if you tell that story to the police you will get yourself into serious trouble." "I get her into trouble." "Mrs. Balfame is above suspicion. It is not my business to warn you, or to defeat the ends of the law, of which apparently you know nothing--" "I know someting. Last night I have tell Herr Kraus; and he say that since I have told the coroner I know notings, much better I touch the lady for five hundert and go home." "O-h-h! That is the advice Old Dutch gave you! Splendid! I think the best thing I can do is to have you arrested bright and early to-morrow morning. Mrs. Balfame is cleared already. You may go." She stared at him for a moment out of eyes that spat fire like two little guns in the top of a fort; then she swung herself about and retreated to the kitchen. "That ought to make her disappear to-night. Her friends will hide her. The mere fact of her disappearance will convince the police, as well as the reporters, that she is guilty. You are all right." He spoke boyishly, and his face, no longer rigid, was full of light. "But if she is innocent?" "No harm done. She'll be smuggled out of the country and suspicion permanently diverted from you. That is all I care about." He caught her hands impulsively in his. "I am glad, so glad! Oh!--It is too soon now, but wait--" He was out of the house before she grasped the fact that he had arrested himself on the brim of another declaration.