"Oh, come on now!" he objected, shaking his head, but not, I felt, with entire conviction. "No," he continued stubbornly, "I been turnin' that over too. But there's no way an accident like that could 'a' happened. It's not possible!" "Fortunately," I insisted, "nothing else is possible! Are you asking me to believe that a young, sensitive girl, with an extraordinary imaginative sympathy for others--a girl of brains and character, as all her friends have reason to know--asking me to believe that she walked coolly into my wife's room this evening, rushed savagely upon her, wrested a paper knife from her hand, and then found the sheer brute strength of will and arm to thrust it through her eye deep into her brain? Are you further asking me to believe that having done this frightful thing she kept her wits about her, telephoned at once for a doctor--being careful to call her crime an accident--and so passed at once into a trance of some kind and walked from the room with the bloody knife in her hand? What possible motive could be strong enough to drive such a girl to such a deed?" "Jealousy," said Sergeant Conlon. "She wanted _you_--and your wife stood in her way. That's what I get from Mrs. Arthur." "I see. But the three or four persons who know Miss Blake and me best will tell you how absurd that is, and you'll find their reasons for thinking so are very convincing. Is Mr. Phar still about?" "He is. I've detained him." "What does he think of Mrs. Arthur's nonsensical theory?" "He's got a theory of his own," said Conlon; "and it happens to be the same as mine." "Well?" "Mr. Phar says Miss Blake's own father went mad--all of a sudden; cut some fancy woman's throat, and his own after! He thinks history's repeated itself, that's all. So do I. Only a crazy woman could 'a' done this--just this way. A strong man in his senses couldn't 'a' drove that paper-knife home like that! But when a person goes mad, sir, all rules are off. I seen too many cases. Things happen you can't account for. Take the matter of that dog now--his broken leg, eh? What are you to make of that? And take this queer state she's in. There's no doubt in my mind, Mr. Hunt--the poor girl's gone crazy, somehow. You nor me can't tell how nor why. But it's back of all this--that's sure." Throughout all this coarse nightmare, this insane break in Nature, as I have called it and must always regard it, let me at least be honest. As Conlon spoke, for the tiniest fraction of a second a desolating fear darted through me, searing every nerve with white-hot pain. Was it true? Might it not conceivably be true? But this single lightning-thrust of doubt passed as it came. No, not as it came, for it blotted all clearness, all power of voluntary thought from my mind; but it left behind it a singular intensity of vision. Even as the lightning-pang vanished, and while time yet stood still, a moving picture that amounted to hallucination began to play itself out before me. It was like