The woman followed mechanically in a sort of wonder.  The person who had spoken to her was young and beautifully dressed in furs that covered her to her feet.  She had gotten down from a motorcar that stood beside the curb — one of those modern vehicles, fitted with splendid trappings.

Beyond the shop-window was a great cafe.  The girl entered and the woman followed.  The attendants came forward to welcome the splendid visitor as one whose arrival at this precise hour of the evening had become a sort of custom.  She gave some directions in a language which the woman did not understand, and they were seated at a table.

The waiters brought a silver dish filled with a clear, steaming soup and served it.  The girl threw back her fur coat and the dazed woman realized how beautiful she was.  Her hair was yellow like ripe corn and there were masses of it banked and clustered about her head; her eyes were blue, and her voice, soft and alluring, was like a friendly arm put around the heart.

The miserable woman was so confused by this transformation — by the sudden swing of the door in the wall that had admitted her into this new, unfamiliar world — that she was never afterward able to remember precisely by what introductory words her story was drawn out.  She found herself taken up, comforted and made to tell it.

Her husband had been a butler in the service of a Mr. Marsh, an eccentric man who lived in one of the old downtown houses of the city.  He was a retired banker with no family.  The man lived alone.  He permitted no servants in the house except the butler.  Meals were sent in on order from a neighboring hotel and served by the butler as the man directed.  He received few visitors in the house and no tradespeople were permitted to come in.  There seemed no reason for this seclusion except the eccentricities of the man that had grown more pronounced with advancing years.

It was the custom of the butler to leave the house at eight o’clock in the evening and return in the morning at seven.  On the morning of the third of February, when the butler entered the house, as he was accustomed to do at eight o’clock in the morning, he found his master dead.

The woman continued with her narrative, speaking slowly.  Every detail was vividly impressed upon her memory and she gave it accurately, precisely.

There was a narrow passage or hall, not more than three feet in width, leading from the butler’s pantry into a little dining-room.  This dining-room the old man had fitted up as a sort of library.  It was farther than any other room from the noises of the city.  His library table was placed with one end against the left wall of the room and he sat with his back toward the passage into the butler’s pantry.  On the morning of the third of February he was found dead in his chair.  He had been stabbed in the back, on the left side, where the neck joins to the shoulder.  A carving-knife had been used and a single blow had accomplished the murder.