“You are hardly complimentary, Countess,” Hughes smiled. “But I am willing to forgive you if you will tell the inspector the story that you have recently related to me.” The woman shut her lips tightly and for a long moment gazed into the eyes of Inspector Bray. “He”--she said at last, nodding in the direction of Colonel Hughes--“he got it out of me--how, I don’t know.” “Got what out of you?” Bray’s little eyes were blinking. “At six-thirty o’clock last Thursday evening,” said the woman, “I went to the rooms of Captain Fraser-Freer, in Adelphi Terrace. An argument arose. I seized from his table an Indian dagger that was lying there--I stabbed him just above the heart!” In that room in Scotland Yard a tense silence fell. For the first time we were all conscious of a tiny clock on the inspector’s desk, for it ticked now with a loudness sudden and startling. I gazed at the faces about me. Bray’s showed a momentary surprise--then the mask fell again. Lieutenant Fraser-Freer was plainly amazed. On the face of Colonel Hughes I saw what struck me as an open sneer. “Go on, Countess,” he smiled. She shrugged her shoulders and turned toward him a disdainful back. Her eyes were all for Bray. “It’s very brief, the story,” she said hastily--I thought almost apologetically. “I had known the captain in Rangoon. My husband was in business there--an exporter of rice--and Captain Fraser-Freer came often to our house. We--he was a charming man, the captain--” “Go on!” ordered Hughes. “We fell desperately in love,” said the countess. “When he returned to England, though supposedly on a furlough, he told me he would never return to Rangoon. He expected a transfer to Egypt. So it was arranged that I should desert my husband and follow on the next boat. I did so--believing in the captain--thinking he really cared for me--I gave up everything for him. And then--” Her voice broke and she took out a handkerchief. Again that odor of lilacs in the room. “For a time I saw the captain often in London; and then I began to notice a change. Back among his own kind, with the lonely days in India a mere memory--he seemed no longer to--to care for me. Then--last Thursday morning--he called on me to tell me that he was through; that he would never see me again--in fact, that he was to marry a girl of his own people who had been waiting--” The woman looked piteously about at us. “I was desperate,” she pleaded. “I had given up all that life held for me--given it up for a man who now looked at me coldly and spoke of marrying another. Can you wonder that I went in the evening to his rooms--went to plead with him--to beg, almost on my knees? It was no use. He was done with me--he said that over and over. Overwhelmed with blind rage and despair, I snatched up that knife from the table and plunged it into his heart. At once I was filled with remorse. I--”