Then she spoke, not directly to me, but more as though she were speaking to herself. "_When she dies, I die too!_" I demanded to know what this meant. I tried to burrow down to the root of the mystery. But my efforts were useless. I could wring nothing more out of the unhappy and tragic-eyed girl. And the one thing she preferred just then, I realized, was solitude. So I withdrew. The entire situation, however, proved rather too much for me. The more I thought it over the more it began to get on my nerves. So I determined on a prompt right-about-face. I decided to begin at the other end of the line. My first move was to phone for the car. Latreille came promptly enough, but with a look of sophistication about his cynical mouth which I couldn't help resenting. "St. Luke's Hospital," I told him as I stepped into the car. At that institution, however, I was again refused all information as to the condition of Harriet Walter. It was not even admitted, when I became more insistent, that any such person was in the hospital. "But I'm a friend of this young lady's," I tried to explain. "And I've a right to know of her condition." The calm-eyed official looked at me quite unmoved. "This young lady seems to have very many friends. And some of them seem to be very peculiar." "What do you mean by that?" I demanded. For answer he pointed to a figure pacing up and down in the open street. "There's another of these friends who've been insisting on seeing her," he explained, with a shrug of extenuation. The uniformed attendant of that carbolized and white-walled temple of pain must have seen my start as I glanced out at the slowly pacing figure. For it was that of a young man wearing a velour hat. It was the youth I had met the night before in Madison Square. "Do you happen to know that man's name?" I asked. "He gave it as Mallory--James Mallory," was the answer. I wasted no more time inside those depressing walls. I was glad to get out to the street, to the open air and the clear afternoon sunlight. I had already decided on my next step. Whether the man in the velour hat recognized me or not, I could not say. If he did, he gave no sign of it. Yet I could see that he resented my addressing him, although he showed no surprise as I did so by name. It was not until I point-blank asked if he had been inquiring about Harriet Walter that any trace of interest came into his face. He replied, with considerable ferocity, that he had. One glimpse of the unsteady fingers and twitching eyelids showed me the tension under which he was struggling. I felt genuinely sorry for him. "I happen to know Miss Walter," I told him, "and if you'll be so good as to step in my car, I can tell you anything you may want to know." "Is your name Adams?" the white-faced youth suddenly demanded. "It is not," I answered, with considerable alacrity, for his face was not pleasant to look at.