Caruth plunged in. “When I came home that night,” he began, “she was waiting for me. I had never seen her before. She said she was a Russian--the daughter of a Russian man and an American woman. She gave me a name, but it was probably assumed. She wanted a letter that had been mailed to me in Stockholm ten days before--by mistake, she said. It enclosed another letter that had been picked up in a bottle floating in the Baltic. The address of this second letter was partly illegible, but it was directed in my care and was sent to me accordingly. She said the letter belonged of right to her friends. While she was speaking the letter arrived--by special delivery. It seemed to be as she had stated. I was about to surrender it to her when my man, Wilkins, claimed it. More, he proved his claim. I gave him the letter. She tried to buy it from him--offered eighteen hundred dollars cash for it. Wilkins refused. Then she threatened him. Said she asked him to surrender it for his own sake; that he would be killed if he once read it; that she could not save him. Of course this smacked of revolution, nihilism, terrorism. Wilkins appeared to be frightened. He agreed to surrender the letter. He laid it on the table, took the money, and went out. Three minutes later we discovered that he had substituted blank paper for the letter. I ran after him and found him dead. The girl left just before the police came.” “And you concealed the fact that she had been here. Why?” Caruth colored. “It--it isn’t a thing that one tells to just any one,” he stammered. “But--well, I suppose it sounds foolish to you, but--I love her.” The reporter did not smile. “Foolish?” he echoed gently. “Why foolish? Love is not foolishness. It’s madness, perhaps, but not foolishness. Good Heavens! Do you think one can be a newspaper man and see daily the broad trail of joy and sorrow, blood, death, ruin, happiness, rapture, and all the rest of it that love marks athwart the path of human life, and think it foolishness? Why, man, love means life! It means the preservation of the race! It means evolution! It is the one great primal passion! No, Mr. Caruth; never expect a newspaper man to laugh at love. He has seen too much of it. Of course I knew that must be your reason for screening the woman. But do you think she killed him?” Caruth shook his head emphatically. “No!” he declared. “No!” “Why not?”