"See her. She has something to tell you which never got into the
papers."

"You say that? You know that?"

"On my honour, Miss Strange."

Violet pondered; then suddenly succumbed.

"Let her come, then. Prompt to the hour. I will receive her at
three. Later I have a tea and two party calls to make."

Her visitor rose to leave. He had been able to subdue all
evidence of his extreme gratification, and now took on a formal
air. In dismissing a guest, Miss Strange was invariably the
society belle and that only. This he had come to recognize.

The case (well known at the time) was, in the fewest possible
words, as follows:

On a sultry night in September, a young couple living in one of
the large apartment houses in the extreme upper portion of
Manhattan were so annoyed by the incessant crying of a child in
the adjoining suite, that they got up, he to smoke, and she to
sit in the window for a possible breath of cool air. They were
congratulating themselves upon the wisdom they had shown in thus
giving up all thought of sleep--for the child's crying had not
ceased--when (it may have been two o'clock and it may have been
a little later) there came from somewhere near, the sharp and