"Got a message from Mr. Charlton to follow him here," Prout gasped. "You don\'t mean to say that you\'ve got her here, sir?"

"Indeed, he has, Mr. Prout," Leona said coolly. "Will you come in? We have been having a pleasant conversation with some pleasing confessions. Have you come for me?"

The woman was smiling now quite freely. All traces of passion and anxiety were gone. She knew the end had come, and she was prepared to accept it without complaint. Prout looked a little awkward as he bowed.

"I shall not slip through your fingers in the same way as before," said Leona. "I flatter myself I did you very neatly when you called upon me in Lytton Avenue. But all the same I am going to escape you."

"It\'s my duty, madame," Prout began, "to ask you to----"

"Accompany you. Presently, but not quite in the way you imagine. I have made my confession in a way that Mr. Lawrence thoroughly appreciates. It was I who murdered Leon Lalage, my husband, in this house; it was I who palmed those notes off on Dr. Bruce. No reason to tell you why now. And it was I in this very house who robbed my late mistress of her jewels and forged the letter from her husband that caused her to take poison. After that I have no more to say. Gentlemen, I am much obliged by your kind attention, and I say farewell to you, thus."

There was a warning shout from Lawrence, who dashed forward and grasped the speaker by the wrist. But she wrenched herself away from him, and placed the table between them. Prout was looking on in a confused kind of way.

"Close with her," yelled Lawrence, "she\'s got poison in her hand."

Leona Lalage laughed aloud. She threw back her head, and a few drops from the little bottle were tilted between her teeth. Almost instantly she grew livid.

"Swift and sure," she said, "it\'s prussic----"

She said no more. The ashy pallor of her skin grew whiter, there was a look of horror, swift as summer lightning, in her splendid eyes. Then she pitched forward, there was a thud and a cloud of dust, and she lay there rigid, motionless.

"Dead," whispered Prout, "dead instantly. It was prussic acid. The whole room reeks of it. Perhaps it was as well to finish it this way. There\'ll be an inquest now, and the whole business will come out."

They laid the body on a sofa, and the trio left the Corner House. They were very silent as they walked along.

"Some houses are accursed," Charlton said at length. "Mine has been the abode of mystery and crime for years. I shall never enter it again.

"And may this be the last of the evils connected with my house."

page314
"Swift and sure," she said,
"it\'s prusic----" --Page 314

"Must attend the inquest, sir," said the practical Prout. "Still, if that was my house, I\'d pull it down if I couldn\'t sell it."

Gordon Bruce was returning from an important consultation when ............