the pit of blackness. Unsteadily he got to his feet and moved toward
the door. His mind was quite clear now and his senses abnormally
sensitive. For instance, he was aware of a faint perfume of violet in
the room, so faint that he had not noticed it before.

There grew on him a horror, an eagerness to be gone from the rooms. It
was based on no reasoning, but on some obscure feeling that there had
taken place something evil, something that chilled his blood.

Yet he did not go. He had come for a purpose, and it was
characteristic of him that he stayed in spite of the dread that grew on
him till it filled his breast. Again he groped along the wall for the
light switch. A second match flared in his fingers and showed it to
him. Light flooded the room.

His first sensation was of relief. This handsome apartment with its
Persian rugs, its padded easy-chairs, its harmonious wall tints, had a
note of repose quite alien to tragedy. It was the home of a man who
had given a good deal of attention to making himself comfortable.
Indefinably, it was a man's room. The presiding genius of it was
masculine and not feminine. It lacked the touches of adornment that
only a woman can give to make a place homelike.

Yet one adornment caught Kirby's eye at once. It was a large
photograph in a handsome frame on the table. The picture showed the
head and bust of a beautiful woman in evening dress. She was a
brunette, young and very attractive. The line of head, throat, and
shoulder was perfect. The delicate, disdainful poise and the gay
provocation in the dark, slanting eyes were enough to tell that she was
no novice in the game of sex. He judged her an expensive orchid