“Mrs. Wells suggested that we come here, Horace,” he began.  “We may need a legal mind on this.  I’m not sure, or rather I think it unlikely.  But just in case—­suppose you tell him, Elinor.”

I have no record of the story Elinor Wells told that night in our little reception-room, with Clara sitting in a corner, grave and white.  It was fragmentary, inco-ordinate.  But I got it all at last.

Charlie Ellingham had killed Arthur Wells, but in a struggle.  In parts the story was sordid enough.  She did not spare herself, or her motives.  She had wanted luxury, and Arthur had not succeeded as he had promised.  They were in debt, and living beyond their means.  But even that, she hastened to add, would not have mattered, had he not been brutal with her.  He had made her life very wretched.

But on the subject of Charlie Ellingham she was emphatic.  She knew that there had been talk, but there had been no real basis for it.  She had turned to him for comfort, and he gave her love.  She didn’t know where he was now, and didn’t greatly care, but she would like to recover and destroy some letters he had written her.

She was looking crushed and ill, and she told her story inco-ordinately and nervously.  Reduced to its elements, it was as follows: 

On the night of Arthur Wells’s death they were dressing for a ball.  She had made a private arrangement with Ellingham to plead a headache at the last moment and let Arthur go alone.  But he had been so insistent that she had been forced to go, after all.  She had sent the governess, Suzanne Gautier, out to telephone Ellingham not to come, but he was not at his house, and the message was left with his valet.  As it turned out, he had already started.

Elinor was dressed, all but her ball-gown, and had put on a negligee, to wait for the governess to return and help her.  Arthur was in his dressing-room, and she heard him grumbling about having no blades for his safety razor.

He got out a case of razors and searched for the strop.  When she remembered where the strop was, it was too late.  The letters had been beside it, and he was coming toward her, with them in his hand.

She was terrified.  He had read only one, but that was enough.  He muttered something and turned away.  She saw his face as he went toward where the revolver had been hidden from the children, and she screamed.

Charlie Ellingham heard her.  The door had been left unlocked by the governess, and he was in the lower hall.  He ran up and the two men grappled.  The first shot was fired by Arthur.  It struck the ceiling.  The second she was doubtful about.  She thought the revolver was still in Arthur’s hand.  It was all horrible.  He went down like a stone, in the hallway outside the door.

They were nearly mad, the two of them.  They had dragged the body in, and then faced each other.  Ellingham was for calling the police at once and surrendering, but she had kept him away from the telephone.  She maintained, and I think it very possible, that her whole thought was for the children, and the effect on their after lives of such a scandal.  And, after all, nothing could help the man on the floor.