Why had he done it, he asked himself with dazed wonder. He owed her nothing. She had forced herself on him, had cajoled him, and had finally fled, leaving him to bear the brunt of her crime--hers or her accomplices. He had done all she asked, had aided her meekly, and at the end had placed himself in shameful jeopardy without even being asked to do so. Harshly he laughed as he thought of it. Then he threw out his hands. “There’s no use in thinking,” he muttered. “I’m a fool--but it’s stronger than I am. I must go on to the end--and lie and lie and lie.” CHAPTER FIVE After all, matters went off very quietly. The murder of James Wilkins caused a surprisingly small sensation. Circumstances were against it. A prominent statesman had just denounced another prominent statesman for having accepted the tainted money of a wicked trust, and the accused statesman was calling heaven and earth as witness to his innocence; the champion heavyweight pugilist of the country had just given way to a new champion; and the Black Hand had blown up a restaurant whose proprietor had defied it. The papers had little space left for a plain case of robbery and murder, such as that of Wilkins seemed to be. Caruth had told a straight story, which had been accepted at its face value. According to him, he had come home late and had sat down to smoke before going to bed. He had laid some money--about eighteen hundred dollars in bills--on the table beside him. Wilkins had been moving about and had seen the money and after a moment had left the room. When Caruth looked for the money an instant later it had disappeared. He had hurried downstairs in hope of catching the man, and with the aid of the night watchman had found his body. On looking up the references Wilkins had brought him, he had found that they were forged. He suspected, therefore, that the man had entered his service with sinister intent, and had been murdered by a confederate who had come to join him in the robbery. The recital of this combination of fact and fancy gave Caruth no compunctions so far as Wilkins was concerned; the man’s references really were forged, and he had really stolen the money, by whatever particular name the law might label his act. To Caruth, this tale seemed very lame, but, to his astonishment, no one questioned it. So utterly was this the case that it irritated him; it seemed to him extraordinary that the actual sequence of events could have happened without in some way impressing itself on the intelligence of every one who came within reach of it. He did not want to be suspected, yet the lack of detective ability on the part of the police angered him. Why this should be so, let psychologists explain.