Kitty looked very pretty and quite pathetic in her smartly simple mourning. She saw Barrison at once, and received him with a subdued cordiality that was the perfection of good taste under the circumstances. “What is it?” she said, in a low voice. There was no artificiality about her now; she was disturbed, apprehensive. “I know it’s something. Please tell me.” “Yes, there is something,” he said. “It’s about—your sister.” He could hear her draw in her breath. “My sister!” she whispered. “Marita! How did you know anything about her?” “I don’t think we need go into an account of that,” Jim said steadily. “As it happens, I do know quite a good deal about her. I know, for instance, that she was in the theater only a little while before Alan Mortimer was murdered.” “You know that!” she exclaimed, in unfeigned surprise. “I thought——” Then she checked herself, but it was too late; she saw at once what she had admitted. “I knew it,” said Barrison, watching her. “The question is—how did you know it, Miss Legaye?” She dropped her eyes and was silent until he felt obliged to insist: “I am afraid I must ask you to tell me about it, though I can easily suppose it isn’t very pleasant for you.” “Pleasant!” she flashed out at him then. “Think what a position I am in! To lose him—_like that_—and then—to find my own sister mixed up in it!” “You think she was mixed up in it, then?” “How on earth do I know?” she cried excitedly. “I—I—oh, Mr. Barrison, you aren’t brutal, like most detectives; you are a gentleman! Won’t you make it a little easier for me? My sister and I were never very fond of each other, but I can’t be the one to implicate her now. I can’t!” “It may seem very dreadful to you, of course, Miss Legaye. But—how can you keep silent? She is already under suspicion. I don’t see how you can avoid telling everything you know.” “I thought—I never dreamed—that it would come to this!” she said miserably. “I thought no one knew of her being there except myself and—and my father.” She seemed to wince as she said the word; Jim remembered that Wrenn had said she was always ashamed of him. “He did not give you this information?” “He only corroborated what we already knew. Now, please, Miss Legaye, for all our sakes, even for your sister’s, tell me what you know.” “For my sister’s?” she repeated. “I don’t know what you have to tell; but, seriously, one of the reasons why I have come to you is that I can’t help hoping that you can supply some tiny link of evidence which will help to clear her. If you saw her leave the theater, for instance——” She shook her head, with an air of deep depression. “I did not see her leave the theater,” she said quietly. “I did not see her at all.” “Did not see her! Then how——” “Wait, Mr. Barrison, and I will tell you. I will tell you just exactly what happened, and you must believe me, for it is the truth. I did not see my sister, but—_I heard her voice_!”