it was clear she had gone to bed so as to make sure of shooting
herself through the heart.

"The pistol is still in her hand; we never disturb anything till
after the doctor has completed his examination."

Each felt the chill of steel against the naked side, and seeing the
pair of stays on the table, they calculated its resisting force.

Harding mused on the ghastly ingenuity, withal so strangely
reasonable. Thompson felt he would give his very life to make a
sketch. Mike wondered what her lover was like. Frank was overwhelmed
in sentimental sorrow. John's soul was full of strife and suffering.
He had sacrificed his poems, and had yet ventured in revels which had
led to such results! Then as they went down-stairs, Harding gave the
porter Lewis Seymour's name and address, and said he should be sent
for at once.




CHAPTER VI


"I don't say we have never had a suicide here before, sir," said the
porter in reply to Harding as they descended the steps of the hotel;
"but I don't see how we are to help it. Whenever the upper classes
want to do away with themselves they chose one of the big hotels--the
Grosvenor, the Langham, or ourselves. Indeed they say more has done
the trick in the Langham than 'ere, I suppose because it is more