He stepped into the room and approached her, followed by Chick, but though she gazed at them with her glittering eyes turned quickly upon them, she did not stir from her chair, nor appear disturbed by their unceremonious entrance. Nick paused in front of her, saying impressively: “You recognize me, Mrs. Clayton, of course. Speak to me. What’s the meaning of this?” She appeared to struggle inwardly, as if to make an effort to reply and to answer his question, but only two words, twice repeated in husky, horrified whispers, came from her drawn, gray lips: “The scar! The scar--the scar!” CHAPTER II. NICK TAKES A CONFIDANT. Nick Carter now saw plainly that Mrs. Julia Clayton had suffered no bodily injury. That she was mentally affected, however, either crazed with horror, or in an abnormal condition resulting from other causes, and that any immediate attempt to evoke from her an intelligible explanation of the circumstances would prove utterly futile--these points were equally obvious to the detective. Nick tried again, nevertheless, gently grasping her shoulder and saying even more impressively: “The scar! What do you mean, Mrs. Clayton? Try to collect yourself. You surely recognize me--Nick Carter, the detective. Try to tell me what has occurred here. What do you mean? What scar?” The face of the woman underwent no change. She stared vacantly at Nick, with no sign of recognition, though she again tried to make a vain effort to answer his questions. But only the same two words, repeated as before, was the result: “The scar! The scar--the scar!” Both detectives had seen at a glance that the man on the floor was dead, that nothing could be done for him, and the attention of both naturally had turned upon the woman, whose mental distraction and bloodstained hands indicated that she had in some way figured in the shocking crime, if such it really was. Chick drew back a little and gazed at Nick, whose grave face now reflected not only his perplexity as to the cause for such a fatality, but also his profound regard for this woman who months before had made him the confidant of her dreadful secret. He was asking himself whether in that could be found the motive for this murder--and he glanced instinctively at the upturned face of the lifeless man on the floor. But it was a fleshy, smooth-shaved face, that of a man well into the sixties--a face that bore not even a remote resemblance to that of David Margate, this woman’s crime-cursed son. Besides, was it not known beyond any reasonable doubt that David Margate was dead? Who could have doubted that either the bullet from Chick Carter’s revolver had proved effective, when a gush of blood covered the face of the reeling crook, or that death had ensued in that swift-flowing stream in the Berkshire Hills, into which Margate had fallen and disappeared, nor so much as arisen for a moment to the surface?