“A terrible dolt, this man. Or in on the trap,” he mused. “But it isn’t over. They’ve got something hidden. Yet he didn’t ask Donovan the question. The answer would have started things. How long after she came in from the street did he see her in my arms? Thirty or forty minutes later.... He would have remembered if asked. And what was she doing in the apartment those thirty or forty minutes?” Five days had passed since the death of his friend and a curious change had come over De Medici. His hand trembled as he dropped it furtively on the gloved fingers of the girl at his side. She ignored the caress. A laceration passed through his heart. “Cold, aloof and defiant,” he mused with a shudder. “She sits next to me like an image of stone. This little hand I touch is the hand that murdered. Yet it lies calmly in a snug glove under my fingers. It is I who tremble. This thing grows in me. The feeling of her guilt overwhelms me. Her cruelty is like the promise of a caress. I bow before it.” Again a shudder stirred him. “Incredible,” he went on silently. “There is a mystery. She could not sit like this if there was a memory of guilt in her. And yet she lies. She avoids me. If it was I who had killed him ... yes, I could sit like this. Calm, amused and cold.” De Medici sighed. He had for the week followed the circle of his thoughts. The shuddering and exultant thing that had risen in him on the night before the locked door had obliterated, almost, his curiosity concerning the crime. Shrinking from himself, despising the evil infatuation that the conviction of her guilt was developing in him, he had felt himself being slowly dragged into a dark region of himself. Alone in his rooms he had sat through the nights musing: “Ah, I’m changing. I feel myself losing the identity of Julien De Medici. The phantoms come closer to my brain. They knock warily at my heart....” He released the unresponsive hand of the girl as the coroner raised his voice. “Call Mr. Philip Johnson.” A well-dressed, quick-mannered man, middle-aged and important-aired, stepped forward and took his place in the witness chair. He identified himself as a broker on the stock exchange. The coroner proceeded. Q. “You were intimately acquainted with the deceased, were you not?” A. “I was.” Q. “In what capacity did you know him?” A. “We were friends and I handled a great part of his business dealings and investments.” Q. “What was the nature of these investments?” A. “Stock investments, chiefly.” Q. “You mean Mr. Ballau played the stock market?” A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “How much money did Mr. Ballau invest through you during the last few years?” A. “I have looked over my books and find that Mr. Ballau invested something like $350,000 in the last year and a half.” Q. “And what became of these investments?” A. “Mr. Ballau was unfortunate. The money was entirely lost as a result of several unforeseen flurries on the market.”