"Take me up at once!" I snapped at him. "Surely there's a mistake. There can be no reason for police interference." His eyes glittered more shrewdly, the drawn parallels deepened yet further as he shot back the elevator door.... It was unmistakably a police officer who admitted me for the first and last time to Gertrude's apartment. On hearing my name he nodded, then closed the door firmly in the face of Buttons, who had lingered. "He's been warned not to tip off the press," said the police officer, "but it's just as well to be cautious." "The press? What do you mean?" I asked, still incredulous. "Is it a New York custom for police to enter a house of mourning?" I was aware as I spoke of repressed voices murmuring in an adjoining room. "I'm Sergeant Conlon," he answered, "in charge here till the coroner comes. He should make it by seven. If you're the poor lady's husband, you'll be needed. I'll have to detain you." As he ended, the murmur ended in the adjoining room, and Lucette walked out from it. She was wearing an evening gown--blue, I think--cut very low, and a twinkling ornament of some kind in her hair. She has fine shoulders and beautiful hair. But her face had gone haggard; she had been weeping; she looked ten years older than when I had last seen her. "What is it? What is it?" I demanded of her. "I know nothing but your telegram!" "Looks like murder," said Sergeant Conlon, dry and short. "I wouldn't talk much if I was you, not till the coroner gets here. I'm bound to make notes of what you say." For the merest hundredth of a second my scalp prickled, my flesh went cold; but sheer incredulity was still strong upon me; it beat back the horror. It was simply not real, all this. "At least," I managed, "give me facts--something!" Then unreality deepened to utter nightmare, passing all bounds of reason. Lucette spoke, and life turned for me to sheer prattling madness; to a gibbering grotesque! "_Susan_ did it!" she cried, her voice going high and strident, slipping from all control. "I know it! I know she did! I know it! Wasn't she with her? _Alone_ with her? Who else could have done it! Who else! _It's in her blood!_" Well, of course, when a woman you have played tag with in her girlhood goes mad before you, raves---- How could one act or answer? Then, too, she had vanished; or had I really seen her in the flesh at all? Really heard her voice, crying out.... Sergeant Conlon's voice came next; short, dry, businesslike. It compelled belief. "I've a question or two for you, Mr. Hunt. This way; steady!" I felt his hand under my elbow. Gertrude's apartment was evidently a very large one; I had vaguely the sensation of passing down a long hall with an ell in it, and so into a small, simply furnished, but tasteful room--the sitting-room for her maids, as I later decided. Sergeant Conlon shut the door and locked it.