“Then, to add to the unpleasantness of my position, just after we boarded the train—­I was accompanying my sister and this young lady, Miss West—­a woman touched me on the sleeve, and I turned to face —­my wife!

“That took away my last bit of nerve.  I told my sister, and you can understand she was in a bad way, too.  We knew what it meant.  Ida had heard that I was going—­”

He stopped and glanced uneasily at Alison.

“Go on,” she said coldly.  “It is too late to shield me.  The time to have done that was when I was your guest.”

“Well,” he went on, his eyes turned carefully away from my face, which must have presented certainly anything but a pleasant sight.  “Miss West was going to do me the honor to marry me, and—­”

“You scoundrel!” I burst forth, thrusting past Alison West’s chair.  “You—­you infernal cur!”

One of the detectives got up and stood between us.  “You must remember, Mr. Blakeley, that you are forcing this story from this man.  These details are unpleasant, but important.  You were going to marry this young lady,” he said, turning to Sullivan, “although you already had a wife living?”

“It was my sister’s plan, and I was in a bad way for money.  If I could marry, secretly, a wealthy girl and go to Europe, it was unlikely that Ida—­that is, Mrs. Sullivan—­would hear of it.

“So it was more than a shock to see my wife on the train, and to realize from her face that she knew what was going on.  I don’t know yet, unless some of the servants—­well, never mind that.

“It meant that the whole thing had gone up.  Old Harrington had carried a gun for me for years, and the same train wouldn’t hold both of us.  Of course, I thought that he was in the coach just behind ours.”

Hotchkiss was leaning forward now, his eyes narrowed, his thin lips drawn to a line.

“Are you left-handed, Mr. Sullivan?” he asked.

Sullivan stopped in surprise.

“No,” he said gruffly.  “Can’t do anything with my left hand.”  Hotchkiss subsided, crestfallen but alert.  “I tore up that cursed telegram, but I was afraid to throw the scraps away.  Then I looked around for lower ten.  It was almost exactly across—­my berth was lower seven, and it was, of course, a bit of exceptional luck for me that the car was number seven.”

“Did you tell your sister of the telegram from Bronson?” I asked.

“No.  It would do no good, and she was in a bad way without that to make her worse.”

“Your sister was killed, think.”  The shorter detective took a small package from his pocket and held it in his hand, snapping the rubber band which held it.

“Yes, she was killed,” Sullivan said soberly.  “What I say now can do her no harm.”

He stopped to push back the heavy hair which dropped over his forehead, and went on more connectedly.

“It was late, after midnight, and we went at once to our berths.  I undressed, and then I lay there for an hour, wondering how I was going to get the notes.  Some one in lower nine was restless and wide awake, but finally became quiet.