for show after the robbery was discovered, and softly stole out.  The hall was dark.  The old man hated a gas-bill.  I felt my way to the vault-room door and gently pushed it open, a little at a time.  When I got inside I remembered that the very first thing I must attend to during the excitement which would follow the discovery of the robbery was to slip the bolt back in its place.  The gas appeared to be burning lower than usual, and I wondered if the prospect of parting with money enough to make the investment had driven the old man to one more turn of his screw of economy.  Although I knew how to open the safe, for previous arrangement had made it easy, I found it to be some trouble after all.  But I got it open and had taken out the money drawer when a noise startled me.  I sprang up, and there was the old man.  He was but a few feet from me.  He had a pistol.  I saw it gleam in the dim light.  I couldn’t stand discovery, and I must protect myself against being shot.  I knew that in the semi-darkness he did not recognize me.  All this came with a flash.  I sprang upon him.  With one hand I caught the pistol, with the other I clutched his throat.  I would choke him senseless and run back to my room.  He threw up one hand, threw back his head and freed his throat.  We were under the gas jet.  My hand struck the screw, and the light leaped to full blaze.  At that instant the pistol fired and the old man fell, I wheeled about and was in the hall; I sprung the lock after me, and in a second I was in my own room—­just as my wife, dazed with fright, had jumped out of bed.  “Come,” I cried, “something must have happened.”  And together we ran into the old man’s room.’

“’During the excitement which followed I forgot no precaution; I slipped the bolt back into place and removed the string from the button of my own window.  My wife was frantic.  I did not suspect that the old woman had seen me, for I was not in the vault-room an instant after the pistol fired, and before that it was so dark that she could not have recognized me.  If I had thought that she did see me’—­

“‘What would you have done?’ the reporter asked.

“‘I don’t know,’ Brooks answered, ’but it is not reasonable to suppose that I would have let her go away from home.  I acknowledge that I did not care to see her recover—­now that I am acknowledging everything—­for at best she could be only in the way, and naturally, she would interfere with my management of the estate.  But if I had been anxious that she should die, I could have had her poisoned.  Instead, however, I employed a quack, who I knew pretended to be a great physician, and who I believed could do her no good.  In fact, I didn’t think that she could live but a few days.’  After pausing for a moment he added, ’She must have seen me just as the light blazed up, and was doubtless standing back from the door.  I didn’t take any money.’

“’But why didn’t you take the money while the old man was away?  Then you would have run no risk of killing him or of being killed.”