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“‘Now,’ she said, sweetly, when she had finished, ‘which do you prefer, to recognize your wife, or to turn all the property over to Samuel Walcott’s widow and hang for his murder?’

“I was dumfounded and horrified. I saw the trap that I was in and I consented to do anything she should say if she would only destroy the papers. This she refused to do. I pleaded with her and implored her to destroy them. Finally she gave them to me with a great show of returning confidence, and I tore them into bits and threw them into the fire.

“That was three months ago. We arranged to go to Spain and do as she said. She was to sail this morning and I was to follow. Of course I never intended to go. I congratulated myself on the fact that all trace of evidence against me was destroyed and that her grip was now broken. My plan was to induce her to sail, believing that I would follow. When she was gone I would marry Miss St. Clair, and if Nina San Croix should return I would defy her and lock her up as a lunatic. But I was reckoning like an infernal ass, to imagine for a moment that I could thus hoodwink such a woman as Nina San Croix.

“To-night I received this.” Walcott took the envelope from his pocket and gave it to Mason. “You saw the effect of it; read it and you will understand why. I felt the death hand when I saw her writing on the envelope.”

Mason took the paper from the envelope. It was written in Spanish, and ran:

“Greeting to RICHARD WARREN.

“The great Senor does his little Nina injustice to think she would go away to Spain and leave him to the beautiful American. She is not so thoughtless. Before she goes, she shall be, Oh so very rich! and the dear Senor shall be, Oh so very safe! The Archbishop and the kind Church hate murderers.

“NINA SAN CROIX.

“Of course, fool, the papers you destroyed were copies.

“N. SAN C.”

To this was pinned a line in a delicate aristocratic hand saying that the Archbishop would willingly listen to Madam San Croix’s statement if she would come to him on Friday morning at eleven.

“You see,” said Walcott, desperately, “there is no possible way out. I know the woman–when she decides to do a thing that is the end of it. She has decided to do this.”

Mason turned around from the table, stretched out his long legs, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. Walcott sat with his head down, watching Mason hopelessly, almost indifferently, his face blank and sunken. The ticking of the bronze clock on the mantel shelf was loud, painfully loud. Suddenly Mason drew his knees in and bent over, put both his bony hands on the table, and looked at Walcott.

“Sir,” he said, “this matter is in such shape that there is only one thing to do. This growth must be cut out at the roots, and cut out quickly. This is the first fact to be determined, and a fool would know it. The second fact is that you must do it yourself. Hired killers are like the grave and the daughters of the horse leech,–they cry always, ‘Give, Give.’ They are only palliatives, not cures. By using them you swap perils. You simply take a stay of execution at best. The common criminal would know this. These are the facts of your problem. The master plotters of crime would see here but two difficulties to meet:

“A practical method for accomplishing the body of the crime.

“A cover for the criminal agent.

“They would see no farther, and attempt to guard no farther. After they had provided a plan for the killing, and a means by which the killer could cover his trail and escape from the theater of the homicide, they would believe all the requirements of the problems met, and would stop. The greatest, the very giants among them, have stopped here and have been in great error.