When Henry Blaine presented himself an hour later at her home, he found Anita inexpressibly shocked by the tragic event of the night. "He was guilty!" she murmured. "He took his own life to escape falling into your hands! That gunshot was no accident, Mr. Blaine. He murdered my father in cold blood, but he has paid. I abhor his memory, and yet I can find it in my heart to be sorry for him!" In silence, the detective placed in her hands the letter of the dead man, and watched her face as she slowly read it. When she looked up, her eyes were wet, and a tiny red spot glowed in either cheek. "Poor Father!" she moaned. "With all his leadership and knowledge of men, he was helpless and unsuspecting in the hands of that merciless fiend! And yet even he thought of his own people at the last, and wanted to spare them. Oh, how I wish we could! If we might only keep from them forever the knowledge of his wickedness, his crime!" "We can, if you are willing." Blaine met her look of startled inquiry, and replied to it with a brief resume of his interview of the previous evening with Rockamore. When he added his suggestion that the matter of the way in which her father came to his death be buried in oblivion, and the public left to believe the first report, she was silent for a time. "But the coroner who performed the autopsy night before last," she remarked, at length, hesitatingly. "He will make the truth public, will he not?" "Not necessarily. That depends upon you. If you wish it, nothing will ever be known." "I think you are right, Mr. Blaine. Father's death has been avenged; neither you nor I can do more. The man who killed him has gone to his last account. Further notoriety and scandal cannot help Father, or bring him back to me. It would only cause needless suffering to those who are no more at fault than we ourselves. If the coroner can be silenced, we will keep our secret, you and I." "Unless,"--Blaine's voice was very grave--"unless it becomes necessary to divulge it in order to get the rest of them within our grasp." "The rest?" she looked up as if she had scarcely heard. "Mallowe and Carlis and Paddington and the horde of lesser conspirators in their hire. We must recover your father's immense fortune, and find out how it was possible for them to divert it to their own channels. There is Mr. Hamilton to be thought of, too--his injury, his kidnaping! If we can succeed in unraveling this mysterious tangle of events without recourse to the fact of our knowledge of the murder, well and good. If not, we must make use of whatever has come to our hand. With the rest of the malefactors brought to justice, you can afford to be magnanimous even to the dead man who has done you the most grievous wrong of all." "It shall be as you say--" She broke off suddenly as her eyes, looking beyond Blaine's shoulder, fell upon a silent figure in the doorway. "Mr. Mallowe!" she cried. "When did you come? How is it that Wilkes failed to announce you?"