were fixed upon the stranger in the doorway. At her feet was the body of
a man, a stout man of perhaps forty. The body lay on its right side, the
face turned to the floor, and from somewhere in the breast flowed a red
stream that massed in a dark, clammy pool upon the slate coloured
linoleum.

Nickie saw a faint, flutter of movement in the limbs of the man on the
floor, and his eyes rose to the face of the woman again. Her dry tongue
passed over her parched lips, she seemed to be making an effort to speak.
On the table near her right hand was a knife.

Nicholas Crips slipped into the room, the door closed softly behind him.
He had recognised the woman. She was his Mary Stuart of the Mask Ball.
The man on the floor he remembered in the guise of Henry VIII.

For a terrible half-minute the two stared at each other over the dead
man.

"You killed him!" whispered Nickie.

The woman tried to moisten her lips again, made an effort to speak, and
her voice broke in her throat. She nodded dumbly.

"My God!"

"You-you-what are you going to do?" whispered the woman. "Why don't you
call out?" There was a wild hope in her dilated eyes. "You don't! You
don't!"

Nickie shook his head. "I don't run for the police?" he said. "No, I am