"He fell in with a girl, a beautiful girl, with bronze hair. The attraction of opposites, I suppose; he was dark--naturally, being Italian. But this girl's past wasn't as pretty as her face. A lot of it is coming back to me now--the details. She'd been raised on the fringe of the underworld. Maybe you know what I mean. Her father and her brother had served time. Oh, not her; she tried to pull away from that sort of thing. "Anyhow, the young violinist fell in love with this girl, madly in love with her. I think they were planning to be married, and then he found out the truth about her. How? I can't tell you that, but he did. The note he left behind him told that--how she had lied to him, deceived him. "He went into the bathroom of his hotel and shot himself through the heart. You see, this young Sarbella came of a very proud family--his father related to the nobility and all that sort of thing. He couldn't marry a girl like that, and he couldn't give her up. There was only one way he could forget her, and he took that way. "In brief, gentlemen, that's the Sarbella case. The girl disappeared; the police didn't hold her, since it was so obviously a suicide. I saw her at the inquest; she seemed pretty badly cut up over it, but--well, you can't always tell about that." "My word!" whispered Doctor Bushnell, aghast. "Kirklan Gilmore's wife was that woman, a woman of the underworld? It seems incredible, preposterous!" "Sarbella," went on Wiggly Price, looking steadily at the guest of Greenacres, "had a brother who was in Italy at the time of the suicide. This brother caught the first boat to New York with the avowed intention----" "I think that I am the best qualified person to finish your narrative," the voice of Victor Sarbella broke in. "So you've decided to start your tongue workin'," crowed Constable Griggs; his chest bulged importantly. "It is my official duty to warn you that anything you may say will be used against you." Sarbella waved his hand impatiently. "This is an explanation, not a confession," he retorted. "My first statement to you remains true, although I admit that I did not tell you all the truth--for two reasons. "Yes, this dead woman," his voice dripped with bitterness, "was the girl in the Sarbella case. It is necessary for me to tell you that Andrea, my younger brother, and I were born and reared in Florence. Our mother was American, our father Italian. "I came to America where I could find a better market for my drawings, and I brought with me Andrea, who was a violinist and expected to earn a great deal of money with his playing. He had wonderful talent, Andrea; even so young, his playing was attracting attention. Would to Heaven that I had left him in Italy. Then that woman would never have set his brain on fire, driven him mad with the madness of infatuation.