The young fellow swung himself into his seat.

“What’s the matter with that woman?” he said, half aloud.

“There’s a murder been done,” cried Trina, swaying in the doorway.

The young fellow drove away, his head over his shoulder, staring at Trina with eyes that were fixed and absolutely devoid of expression.

“What’s the matter with that woman?” he said again to himself as he turned the corner.

Trina wondered why she didn’t scream, how she could keep from it—­how, at such a moment as this, she could remember that it was improper to make a disturbance and create a scene in the street.  The peddler of wild game was looking at her suspiciously.  It would not do to tell him.  He would go away like the butcher’s boy.

“Now, wait a minute,” Trina said to herself, speaking aloud.  She put her hands to her head.  “Now, wait a minute.  It won’t do for me to lose my wits now.  What must I do?” She looked about her.  There was the same familiar aspect of Polk Street.  She could see it at the end of the alley.  The big market opposite the flat, the delivery carts rattling up and down, the great ladies from the avenue at their morning shopping, the cable cars trundling past, loaded with passengers.  She saw a little boy in a flat leather cap whistling and calling for an unseen dog, slapping his small knee from time to time.  Two men came out of Frenna’s saloon, laughing heartily.  Heise the harness-maker stood in the vestibule of his shop, a bundle of whittlings in his apron of greasy ticking.  And all this was going on, people were laughing and living, buying and selling, walking about out there on the sunny sidewalks, while behind her in there—­in there—­in there——­

Heise started back from the sudden apparition of a white-lipped woman in a blue dressing-gown that seemed to rise up before him from his very doorstep.

“Well, Mrs. McTeague, you did scare me, for——­”

“Oh, come over here quick.”  Trina put her hand to her neck; swallowing something that seemed to be choking her.  “Maria’s killed—­Zerkow’s wife—­I found her.”

“Get out!” exclaimed Heise, “you’re joking.”

“Come over here—­over into the house—­I found her—­she’s dead.”

Heise dashed across the street on the run, with Trina at his heels, a trail of spilled whittlings marking his course.  The two ran down the alley.  The wild-game peddler, a woman who had been washing down the steps in a neighboring house, and a man in a broad-brimmed hat stood at Zerkow’s doorway, looking in from time to time, and talking together.  They seemed puzzled.

“Anything wrong in here?” asked the wild-game peddler as Heise and Trina came up.  Two more men stopped on the corner of the alley and Polk Street and looked at the group.  A woman with a towel round her head raised a window opposite Zerkow’s house and called to the woman who had been washing the steps, “What is it, Mrs. Flint?”