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I knew it when the sudden sharp tinkle of the telephone set my heart throbbing almost as quickly as the little bell hammer buzzed.

“Jameson, for Heaven’s sake find Kennedy immediately and bring him over here to the Novella Beauty Parlour. We’ve got the worst case I’ve been up against in a long time. Dr. Leslie, the coroner, is here, and says we must not make a move until Kennedy arrives.”

I doubt whether in all our long acquaintance I had ever heard First Deputy O’Connor more wildly excited and apparently more helpless than he seemed over the telephone that night.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Never mind, never mind. Find Kennedy,” he called back almost brusquely. “It’s Miss Blanche Blaisdell, the actress–she’s been found dead here. The thing is an absolute mystery. Now get him, GET HIM.”

It was still early in the evening, and Kennedy had not come in, nor had he sent any word to our apartment. O’Connor had already tried the laboratory. As for myself, I had not the slightest idea where Craig was. I knew the case must be urgent if both the deputy and the coroner were waiting for him. Still, after half an hour’s vigorous telephoning, I was unable to find a trace of Kennedy in any of his usual haunts.

In desperation I left a message for him with the hall-boy in case he called up, jumped into a cab, and rode over to the laboratory, hoping that some of the care-takers might still be about and might know something of his whereabouts. The janitor was able to enlighten me to the extent of telling me that a big limousine had called for Kennedy an hour or so before, and that he had left in great haste.

I had given it up as hopeless and had driven back to the apartment to wait for him, when the hall-boy made a rush at me just as I was paying my fare.

“Mr. Kennedy on the wire, sir,” he cried as he half dragged me into the hall.

“Walter,” almost shouted Kennedy, “I’m over at the Washington Heights Hospital with Dr. Barron–you remember Barron, in our class at college? He has a very peculiar case of a poor girl whom he found wandering on the street and brought here. Most unusual thing. He came over to the laboratory after me in his car. Yes, I have the message that you left with the hall-boy. Come up here and pick me up, and we’ll ride right down to the Novella. Goodbye.”

I had not stopped to ask questions and prolong the conversation, knowing as I did the fuming impatience of O’Connor. It was relief enough to know that Kennedy was located at last.

He was in the psychopathic ward with Barron, as I hurried in. The girl whom he had mentioned over the telephone was then quietly sleeping under the influence of an opiate, and they were discussing the case outside in the hall.

“What do you think of it yourself?” Barron was asking, nodding to me to join them. Then he added for my enlightenment: “I found this girl wandering bareheaded in the street. To tell the truth, I thought at first that she was intoxicated, but a good look showed me better than that. So I hustled the poor thing into my car and brought her here. All the way she kept crying over and over: ‘Look, don’t you see it? She’s afire! Her lips shine–they shine, they shine.’ I think the girl is demented and has had some hallucination.”

“Too vivid for a hallucination,” remarked Kennedy decisively. “It was too real to her. Even the opiate couldn’t remove the picture, whatever it was, from her mind until you had given her almost enough to kill her, normally. No, that wasn’t any hallucination. Now, Walter, I’m ready.”