“And this pretty clock?” he asked, pointing to it. “Did he buy that also?” She stared at it and then nodded her head. “_Ja, mein Herr._” “_So!_--that is curious. I am particularly interested in that clock, _gnädige Frau_. Can you remember where it was bought?” She hesitated, ventured a scared glance at him, and obviously forced herself to speech. The two officers involuntarily bent forward in their interest. “No, _mein Herr_.” She glanced round as though seeking an opportunity for escape. The doctor repeated his question in a level tone of authority, his eyes fixed on her. “You are sure you cannot remember where that clock was bought, _gnädige Frau_?” “Quite sure.” Her breast was heaving. She half rose from her seat. “Why do you ask me all these questions? Let me go!--Let me go! You have no right to question me like this! I--I tell you it was bought--it was all bought!” The doctor stepped forward with a quick movement, seized her wrist, and forced her back into her seat. “I beg of you!” he said in a voice that compelled obedience. She subsided, trembling in every limb. Her eyes followed his every movement with the fascinated attention of a frightened animal. The doctor came close to her, and from her point of view glanced up to the mantelpiece. Then, stepping back, he arranged the candles so that the face of the clock, seen from her position, was a disc of bright reflection. Without a word but with a deliberation which awed even the watching officers by its inflexible though mysterious purpose, he turned to her once more, and, with the gently firm touch of a medical man, posed her head so that she looked straight before her. Paralyzed under his masterful dominance, she submitted plastically. She was too frightened to utter a sound. Only her eyes widened as she saw him produce a heavy revolver. “Now, _gnädige Frau_!” he said, and his voice, though passionless, was intense in its expression of level will-power, “do not move your head! Look up--under your eyebrows. You see that clock? Look at it--continue to look at it!--If you take your eyes off it for one fraction of a second I shall shoot you dead! You are looking at it? It marks a quarter to eight. When it strikes eight you will tell me quite truthfully how you came by it!” He ceased. The young woman, her face white with terror, her mouth twitching, her nostrils distended, sat motionless, staring up under her eyebrows at the face of the clock. There was a dead silence in the room. The minutes passed. The young woman did not move a muscle. Her wide-open eyes fixed on the clock, she seemed to stiffen into a cataleptic rigidity. The doctor put aside his revolver. He approached her, took one of her wrists and lifted her hand from her lap. It lay limply in his.