"I know, _I_ know!" he stopped me off. "But I want you to get it all straight. Mrs. Hunt, sir, was killed--somehow--with a long, sharp-pointed brass paper-knife--a reg'lar weapon. I've examined it. And someone drove that thing--and it must'a' took some force, believe _me_!--right through her left eye up to the handle--a full inch of metal plumb into her brain!" I tried to believe him as he said this; as, seeing my blankness, he repeated it for me in other words. For the moment it was impossible. This sort of thing must have happened in the world, of course--at other times, to other people. But not now, not to Gertrude. Certainly not to Gertrude; a woman so aloof, so exquisite, self-sheltered, class-sheltered, not merely from ugliness, from the harsh and brutal, but from everything in life even verging toward vulgarity, coarse passion, the unrestrained.... "That's the way she was killed, Mr. Hunt--no mistake. Now--who did it--and why? That's the point." At my elbow was a table with a reading-lamp on it, a desk-set, a work-basket, belonging, I suppose, to one of the maids, and some magazines. One magazine lay just before me--_The Reel World_--a by-product of the great moving-picture industry. I had been staring--unseeingly, at first--at a flamboyant advertisement on its cover that clamored for my attention, until now, with Conlon's question, it momentarily gained it. The release of a magnificent Superfeature was announced--in no quavering terms. "The Sins of the Fathers" it shrieked at me! "All the thrilling human suspense"; "virile, compelling"; "brimming over with the kind of action and adventure your audiences crave"; "it delivers the wallop!" Instantly, with a new force, Lucette's outcry swept back upon me. "Susan did it! Wasn't she with her? Alone with her? _It's in her blood!_" And at once every faculty of my spirit leaped, with an almost supernatural acuteness, to the defense of the one being on earth I wholly loved. All sense of unreality vanished. Now for it--since it must be so! Susan and I, if need be, against the world! "Go on, sergeant. What's your theory?" "Never mind my theory! I'd like to get _yours_ first--when I've given you all I know." "All right, then! But be quick about it!" "Easy, Mr. Hunt! It's not as simple as all that. Well, here it is: Somewhere round ten o'clock, a Miss Blake--a magazine-writer livin' on West 10th Street--your ward, I understand----" "Yes."