"O God!" said Betty Tregarth softly.

Raxel allowed her a full five minutes of silence in which to grasp the exact significance of her position, and at the end of that time the pain in her head had abated a little.

"I don't care," she said dazedly. "I'll see it through--I'll tell them I was drugged."

"That is no excuse for murder," said Raxel, "and taking drugs is, in itself, an offense."

"But I can tell them everything about it--how you brought me here. There's proof. You telephoned. The exchange can prove that."

"The exchange can prove nothing," said Raxel. "I did not telephone--I should be a very poor tactician to have overlooked such an obvious error. Your line was tapped, and the exchange has no record of the call. I must ask you to realize the circumstances. You will be taken away from here, and the house will be left exactly as we found it. The only fingerprints will be yours on the automatic you used. Nothing has been moved, and Inspector Henley will be found lying dead here when the police are summoned by his housekeeper on her return. We have treated him very gently during his captivity; and before we leave, the ropes that bound him will be removed, so that from an examination of his body it will be impossible to prove that he was not completely at liberty, in his own house--as any man, even a detective, has every right to be. The scene will be staged in such a way that the detectives, unless they are absolute imbeciles, will deduce that Henley was entertaining a woman here, and that for some reason or other she shot him. The woman, of course, will be you. But your finger-prints are not known to the police, and there will be nothing to incriminate you unless I should write and tell them, in an anonymous letter, where they scan find the owner of the fingerprints on the gun, I don't want to have to do that."