"I can come at once. Is anything wrong?"
"Chris has been killed," she replied, and hung up the receiver. Then
she sat down to wait, and to watch for Chris's cynical smile to flash in
some dusky corner.
Clayton found her there, collapsed in her chair, a slim, gray-faced girl
with the rouge giving a grotesque vitality to her bloodless cheeks. She
got up very calmly and gave him the cablegram. Then she fainted in a
crumpled heap at his feet.