“Then what happened?”

“Why, I rushed to pick him up.  Everything was confusion.  I recall someone behind me saying, ’Here, boy, take all these papers off the table and carry them into my office before they get lost in the excitement.’  I think it was Bruce’s voice.  The next moment I heard someone say, ‘Stand back, Mrs. Parker has fainted.’  But I didn’t pay much attention, for I was calling to someone not to get a doctor over the telephone, but to go down to the fifth floor where one has an office.  I made Mr. Parker as comfortable as I could.  There wasn’t much I could do.  He seemed to want to say something to me, but he couldn’t talk.  He was paralyzed, at least his throat was.  But I did manage to make out finally what sounded to me like, ’Tell her I don’t believe the scandal, I don’t believe it.’  But before he could say whom to tell he had again become unconscious, and by the time the doctor arrived he was dead.  I guess you know everything else as well as I do.”

“You didn’t hear the shot fired from any particular direction?” asked Kennedy.

“No, sir.”

“Well, where do you think it came from?”

“That’s what puzzles me, sir.  The only thing I can figure out is that it was fired from the outside office—­perhaps by some customer who had lost money and sought revenge.  But no one out there heard it either, any more than, they did in the directors’ room or the ladies’ department.”

“About that message,” asked Kennedy, ignoring what to me seemed to be the most important feature of the case, the mystery of the silent bullet.  “Didn’t you see it after all was over?”

“No, sir; in fact I had forgotten about it till this moment when you asked me to reconstruct the circumstances exactly.  No, sir, I don’t know a thing about it.  I can’t say it impressed itself on my mind at the time, either.”

“What did Mrs. Parker do when she came to?”

“Oh, she cried as I have never seen a woman cry before.  He was dead by that time, of course.  Mr. Bruce and I saw her down in the elevator to her car.  In fact, the doctor, who had arrived, said that the sooner she was taken home the better she would be.  She was quite hysterical.”

“Did she say anything that you remember?”

Downey hesitated.

“Out with it, Downey,” said the inspector.  “What did she say as she was going down in the elevator?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell us.  I’ll arrest you if you don’t.”

“Nothing about the murder, on my honor,” protested Downey.

Kennedy leaned over suddenly and shot a remark at him, “Then it was about the note.”

Downey was surprised, but not quickly enough.  Still he seemed to be considering something, and in a moment he said: 

“I don’t know what it was about, but I feel it is my duty, after all, to tell you.  I heard her say, ‘I wonder if he knew.’”

“Nothing else?”