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not know just what credence I would give to her tale. By now she had recovered some of her color, though I could see that she was still a little shaken.

“No, it won’t sound foolish, Miss Sargent,” I said. “So many things have happened that sound foolish . . . and yet we saw them happen. Nothing is too far-fetched, nothing too improbable. Don’t forget that tomorrow morning the coroner’s inquest on poor Augustin Arnold takes place . . . and yet that might sound foolish, too. Arnold is dead. . . .”

There was a pause between us for a moment, as our minds went back to the terror of the scene we had both witnessed and taken part in.

“Yes, you’re right,” she said at length. “Well, as I was saying, I was just about to turn away from my dressing table when it happened. My mother had been with me earlier in the evening—before the show. She had not been able to stay for the performance, because my uncle, her brother, is very ill, and she had had to go to the hospital to see how he was. But she had left her little brooch with me, for good luck. My mother, I ought to explain, is a little old-fashioned, and she still adheres to the bygone custom of wearing a brooch with a photograph in it. It’s a small thing, it could be concealed in the palm of a man’s hand, and the photograph it contains is an old one of me. She has a sentimental affection for it, and the legend in our family is that it brings good luck. So she left it on