Craig greeted her as reassuringly as he could, but as she sat nervously before us, I could see that she was in reality pale, worn, and anxious.

“We have had a rather hard day,” began Kennedy after the usual polite inquiries about her own and her husband’s health had been, I thought, a little prolonged by him.

“Indeed?” she asked.  “Have you come any closer to the truth?”

Kennedy met her eyes, and she turned away.

“Yes, Mr. Jameson and I have put in the better part of the day in going from one institution for the insane to another.”

He paused.  The startled look on her face told as plainly as words that his remark had struck home.

Without giving her a chance to reply, or to think of a verbal means of escape, Craig hurried on with an account of what we had done, saying nothing about the original letter which had started us on the search for Thornton, but leaving it to be inferred by her that he knew much more than he cared to tell.

“In short, Mrs. Pitts,” he concluded firmly, “I do not need to tell you that I already know much about the matter which you are concealing.”

The piling up of fact on fact, mystifying as it was to me who had as yet no inkling of what it was tending toward, proved too much for the woman who knew the truth, yet did not know how much Kennedy knew of it.  Minna Pitts was pacing the floor wildly, all the assumed manner of the actress gone from her, yet with the native grace and feeling of the born actress playing unrestrained in her actions.

“You know only part of my story,” she cried, fixing him with her now tearless eyes.  “It is only a question of time when you will worm it all out by your uncanny, occult methods.  Mr. Kennedy, I cast myself on you.”

X

THE TOXIN OF DEATH

The note of appeal in her tone was powerful, but I could not so readily shake off my first suspicions of the woman.  Whether or not she convinced Kennedy, he did not show.

“I was only a young girl when I met Mr. Thornton,” she raced on.  “I was not yet eighteen when we were married.  Too late, I found out the curse of his life—­and of mine.  He was a drug fiend.  From the very first life with him was insupportable.  I stood it as long as I could, but when he beat me because he had no money to buy drugs, I left him.  I gave myself up to my career on the stage.  Later I heard that he was dead—­a suicide.  I worked, day and night, slaved, and rose in the profession—­until, at last, I met Mr. Pitts.”

She paused, and it was evident that it was with a struggle that she could talk so.

“Three months after I was married to him, Thornton suddenly reappeared, from the dead it seemed to me.  He did not want me back.  No, indeed.  All he wanted was money.  I gave him money, my own. money, for I made a great deal in my stage days.  But his demands increased.  To silence him I have paid him thousands.  He squandered them faster than ever.  And finally, when it became unbearable, I appealed to a friend.  That friend has now succeeded in placing this man quietly in a sanitarium for the insane.”