"I am her father," half-pleaded, half-protested Brauner.
"Cap'n's orders," said the policeman in a gentler voice. "The best thing you can do is to go to the station house and wait there. You won't get to see her here."
Meanwhile Casey, still holding Hilda by the arm, was guiding her along a dark hall. When they touched a door he threw it open. He pushed her roughly into the room. For a few seconds the sudden blaze of light blinded her. Then—
Before her, stretched upon a table, was—Mr. Feuerstein. She shrank back and gazed at him with wide, fascinated eyes. His face was turned toward her, his eyes half-open; he seemed to be regarding her with a glassy, hateful stare—the "curse in a dead man's eye." His chin was fallen back and down, and his lips exposed his teeth in a hideous grin. And then she saw— Sticking upright from his throat was a knife, the knife from their counter. It seemed to her to be trembling as if still agitated from the hand that had fiercely struck out his life.
"My God!" moaned Hilda, sinking down to the floor and hiding her face.
As she crouched there, Casey said cheerfully to Captain Hanlon, "You see she's guilty all right, Cap'n."
Hanlon took his cigar from between his teeth and nodded. At this a man sitting near him burst out laughing. Hanlon scowled at him.
The man—Doctor Wharton, a deputy coroner—laughed again. "I suppose you think she acts guilty," he said to Hanlon.
"Any fool could see that," retorted Hanlon.
"Any fool would see it, you'd better say," said Doctor Wharton. "No matter how she took it, you fellows would wag your heads and say 'Guilty.'"