Perhaps it would be best to set forth first my connection with the case. You may remember that Mrs. Breese, before her storied death, was the center of a divorce case that startled the country. There is no need here to rake the dead leaves of sensation. It was one of those cases that linger on to the profit of lawyers over a period of years and supply the tabloids with juicy drippings. When it was all over, Mrs. Breese won. Her husband, in disgusted settlement, gave her the Havana home, the yacht, _Mary Rose_, named for their daughter, a coöperative Park Avenue apartment, and a competence that came to some fifty thousand dollars a year. Mrs. Breese’s lawyers fared even better. I might mention that Mrs. Breese was independently wealthy in addition, although her legal representatives went to some pains to conceal the fact. In any case, the scandal drove her out of the enigmatic pages of the Social Register and made her for the time being one of the best known women in America. You will remember, too, that the name of Guy Thomas was coupled with hers all during the tortuous trials and appeals. Mr. Breese named him as co-respondent, although all efforts to prove the accusation were unsuccessful. Mutual friends of the Breeses divided on this issue. Gordon Rice, for example, in characteristic hearty fashion, refused to believe a word of it and severed a relationship of thirty years’ standing with the husband. Mr. Rice said Guy Thomas was a pleasant young man and an excellent dancer, which Mr. Breese was not, and he’d be hanged if he’d stand by and see an innocent woman spattered with scandal because of an entirely harmless friendship with a personable young actor. When I set forth as a reporter for the News Association to cover the trial, I flattered myself on a professional lack of opinion in the matter. I did not know then that I would be thrown bodily into the maze of Mrs. Breese’s post-divorce life; and her perplexing death. Why I ever entered the service of Mrs. Breese I do not know. Ben Smith thinks it was sheer laziness and the inability to refuse. Perhaps it was because the woman fascinated me as a creature of incredibility. Yet she was real enough. But let me tell the story from the beginning. You shall judge for yourself. With the aid of a newspaper clipping, I establish April 17, 1928 as the date of my first meeting with Mrs. Breese. I had come up from Richmond several weeks before, and finally found a berth with a local news agency. The case was totally unfamiliar to me when I set out to interview Mrs. Breese a day before her trial was scheduled to begin.