“I came at once,” said the doctor, advancing quickly to the Attorney General’s side. A horrified exclamation escaped him as his eyes fell on the tragic figure, and he recoiled a few steps. Then his professional instincts returned to him, and he made a cursory examination of Mrs. Trevor. As he rose from his knees, the eyes of the two men met. He silently shook his head.
“Life has been extinct for hours,” he said. “Rigor mortis has set in.”
The Attorney General gulped back a sob. Reason had told him the same thing when he first found her; but he had hoped blindly against hope.
“Can she be removed to her room?” he asked, as soon as he could control his voice.
The doctor nodded his acquiescence, and with the assistance of Clark, Wilkins, and the chauffeur, they carried all that was mortal of the beautiful young wife to her chamber.
Shortly afterwards, the Attorney General returned to his office, and together he and Clark went over the contents of the safe. They had just finished their task when Beatrice came into the room.
Beatrice Trevor was a well-known figure in the society life of New York, Paris, and Washington. Taller than most women, with a superb figure, she carried herself with regal grace. She was not, strictly speaking, a beauty; her features were not regular enough. But there were men, and women, too, who were her adoring slaves.
Her mother had died when she was five years old, and up to the time of her eighteenth year she had lived alone with her father. Then he met, wooed, and won the beautiful foreigner, whose butterfly career had come to so untimely an end.
“Father, I must know just what has happened.”
“Why, my dearest—” there was deep tenderness in the Attorney General’s usually impassive voice—“I thought you had been told. Hélène evidently went into the safe to put away her jewelry; and in some mysterious way she must have pulled the heavy door to behind her. Thus locked in, she was smothered. It is terrible—terrible—” His voice shook with the intensity of his emotion. “But—well, Wilkins, what is it?”