we found would be in the card-room or on the staircase, and nothing but the fear that Halsey was in danger drove me on; with every step my knees seemed to give way under me. Gertrude was ahead and in the card-room she stopped, holding her candle high. Then she pointed silently to the doorway into the hall beyond. Huddled there on the floor, face down, with his arms extended, was a man. 

 Gertrude ran forward with a gasping sob. “Jack,” she cried, “oh, Jack!” 

 Liddy had run, screaming, and the two of us were there alone. It was Gertrude who turned him over, finally, until we could see his white face, and then she drew a deep breath and dropped limply to her knees. It was the body of a man, a gentleman, in a dinner coat and white waistcoat, stained now with blood—the body of a man I had never seen before. 

 

CHAPTER IV. WHERE IS HALSEY?

 Gertrude gazed at the face in a kind of fascination. Then she put out her hands blindly, and I thought she was going to faint. 

 “He has killed him!” she muttered almost inarticulately; and at that, because my nerves were going, I gave her a good shake. 

 “What do you mean?” I said frantically. There was a depth of grief and conviction in her tone that was worse than anything she could have said. The shake braced her, anyhow, and she seemed to pull herself together. But not another word would she say: she stood gazing down at that gruesome figure on the floor, while Liddy, ashamed of her flight and afraid to come back alone, drove before her three terrified women-servants into the drawing-room, which was as near as any of them would venture. 

 Once in the drawing-room, Gertrude collapsed and went from one fainting spell into another. I had all I could do to keep Liddy from drowning her with cold water, and the maids huddled in a corner, as much use as so many sheep. In a short time, although it seemed hours, a car came rushing up, and Anne Watson, who had waited to dress, opened the door. Three men from the Greenwood Club, in all kinds of costumes, hurried in. I recognized a Mr. Jarvis, but the others were strangers. 

 “What’s wrong?” the Jarvis man asked—and we made a strange picture, no doubt. “Nobody hurt, is there?” He was looking at Gertrude. 

 “Worse than that, Mr. Jarvis,” I said. “I think it is murder.” 

 At the word there was a 

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