To the woman pinned to the wall by shock—the shimmering frivolity of her evening gown, a flimsy, fluttery affair of silver tissue, lilac and blue, lending form and colour to the illusion of a bright butterfly impaled—the moments immediately following that murderous fusillade were a raving welter of horrors.

Between two heartbeats she saw Lynn, with a face as blank as paper, spinning, toppling, beating the air with aimless arms, pitching to the floor like something blasted, resting there in a sickening, inert crumple; and was keenly aware of the acrid reek of smokeless powder cutting, as acid cuts oil, the sensuous scent of the roses that dressed the room in her honour; and all the while was conscious of the pistol nosing in between the draperies like an animate thing of infinite malice, and the pallid oval of the face behind it, that seemed to float in the dark as might the mask of some mad ghost.

As the din of those three shots, beating from wall to wall, lost weight and volume, a thin shouting became audible from some point outside the house, and Nelly Marquis with the sweep of a fury broke through the hangings at the window, and pulled up with pistol levelled point-blank at Lucinda's breast.

Through the least of pauses, the merest fragment of a second, a time measureless in its lapse to one whose every function was frozen in paralysis of fear, a single thought persisted: Another instant and I shall be as Lynn.... Nelly's eyes were burning like black malignant opals in a countenance at once luminous and wan. Death's icy grin glimpsed in the play of light along that blunt blue barrel. Lucinda felt as one caught fast in the pitiless jaws of some tremendous vice whose pinch stilled the beating of her heart and arrested her labouring lungs.

Then abruptly through the window a dark body hurled and fastening upon the woman's back, swinging her aside, the pistol detonated with a bellow, the bullet plumped into the wall close by Lucinda's head.

She heard a voice crying out again and again: "Bel! Bel! Bel! ..."

Her own voice....

For an indeterminable time she hung in dread upon the issue of that swaying combat: while Bel clung to the woman's arm, muttering and panting in futile efforts to wrest her weapon away; while Nelly clawed, bit, kicked, pounded her free fist repeatedly into Bel's face, and wrenched madly at her captive wrist.

Of a sudden, from her hand a spiteful tongue of fire licked out at Bel, his right arm flailed back and fell useless, agony convulsed his features; and free, the woman bounded away and with the laugh of a maniac swung the pistol to bear upon his head.

Lucinda's faculties clicked together then as gears mesh when the motor has been idling; the call of the emergency met with response in the form of instant and direct action. Without knowing what she did, she flung herself upon Nelly's arm and bore it down. With deflected muzzle the pistol exploded for the last time. Dropping it, Nelly turned on Lucinda and dealt with her as might a madwoman. Impressions grew confused beyond assortment, of flopping wildly this way and that, of hot breath beating into her face, of her bare flesh suffering a rain of cruel blows; of elemental lusts to maim and kill awakening from lifelong slumber, in this moment of close grips with a warm, living, hating and hateful human body....

Thrown off without warning, how she couldn't guess, she felt herself reeling back, tripping, falling. Something struck the back of her head a stunning blow, and she knew flickering nausea while dense night like a moving cloud on every hand closed in upon her, and the world, in the likeness of a rainbow swirl streaked with fiery paths of sparks, guttered into blank nullity....

Nothingness absolute and still received her, harboured her for a space, spewed her back into life again.

Cold rain spattering cheeks and brows ... once more the heart-rending perfume of roses ... anguish incomparable racking her temples ... her heart a wild thing caged ... ammonia in strangling whiffs....

Choking and coughing she unclosed her eyes upon the vision of Bel's face. A hand holding a bottle of smelling salts dropped away from her nose. Bel saluted her reviving intelligence with an even growl: "Coming round, eh? About time. You'll do now, I guess. Try to pull yourself together. No time to lose."

She was on the floor, the bulk of the lounge between her and the spot where Summerlad had fallen; her shoulders propped against Bel's knee, her head resting in the crook of his arm. Summerlad's Jap boy was standing by with water in a silver vessel. At a nod from Bel he filled a glass and, bending over, set it to Lucinda's lips. While she was gulping thirstily, Bel said something she didn't catch; but as soon as she turned her head from the glass, the Japanese took it away and himself as well.

The living-room, with its softly lighted walls and draped black rectangles of windows open to the night, presented itself in a guise inexplicably unfamiliar. She felt as if she had been a long time away. In mystification, looking back to Bel, she asked: "I fainted, didn't I?"

He grunted: "You struck your head, when that hell-cat threw you—went out for ten minutes by the clock. How do you feel now?"

"My head aches...." She discovered that Bel was in his shirt-sleeves, with the cuff turned back above his right elbow, the forearm rudely bandaged with torn linen on which a deep stain was spreading. "But Bel—your arm——?"

"Hurts like hell, but that's the worst of it, thank God. Bullet ploughed through the underside from wrist to elbow, nearly. I'd be dead if you hadn't jumped for her."

"And I, if you hadn't come through the window when you did."

"If you're grateful for that—try to get up."

"But ... Lynn?"

Bel laughed shortly. "The excellent Mr. Summerlad's all right—I mean to say, still breathing. That's all we can tell till the surgeon gets here. I've telephoned. The fellow ought to show up any minute now. If you can manage to get a grip on yourself, I'd be glad to get you out of here first."

"I don't understand.... What became of—her?"

"Got away clean, worse luck!—ducked past me and through the window like a shot. I tried to follow but she gave me the slip in the dark. That's all right: she won't trouble us again. She left her pistol behind—anyway, it was empty—and the police will pick her up before morning.... Now: how about getting up?"

"I'll try," Lucinda said meekly. "Please help me." But then, appreciating that she was in no way incapacitated, she got up unaided, and steadied herself with a hand on the back of the lounge.

Summerlad lay where he had fallen, on the far side of that piece of furniture. His face, upturned to the staring light, was like a thing of sculptured ivory, expressionless and bleached; the lips ajar, the whites of his eyes alone visible under the half-shut lids with their effeminate lashes. The shirt beneath the flowered dressing-gown was hideously blotted. He was so deathly still that terror took hold on Lucinda's heart and mind.

"You think.... O Bel! do you really think he will live?"

"No fear," Bel sneered. "He'll make a fool of many another woman before he's finished. Here: put this on, will you?"

He was proffering her wrap. Like an automaton Lucinda accepted it, but seemed to forget that the thing was meant for wear.

"Where's your car?"

"I told my driver to call up about ten——"

"I'll attend to that, then. My chauffeur will run you down to the hotel. I think he's to be trusted. Wish I felt as sure of that Jap."

"Sure of him?"

"Why do you suppose I'm hurrying you away? Do you want the papers to get hold of the fact you were keeping an assignation with this actor when his wife caught you and shot him?"

Lucinda flinched, faintly remonstrated: "Bel!"

"Well?" he demanded—"got anything to say to that?"

"You don't think ... nobody would dare...."

"What's the reason I don't think? Why wouldn't anybody dare? I presume you expect the world—this good, kind, charitable world we live in—to believe 'appearances are against you'!"

Affronted, she held her answer, seeing her husband as with eyes from which scales had newly dropped, as a man she barely knew, whose fleshy husk alone was familiar in her sight, but whose spirit was altogether strange: a man self-reliant and resolute, skeptical, cold and hard of temper, estranged and unforgiving; witness the contemptuous incredulity that animated his regard.

Smouldering indignation blazed, she threw back her head with eyes as cold as his, a mouth as hard.

"You are insolent," she pronounced slowly. "If you think—if you dare think what you hint—what is it to you whether I go or stay?"

"You forget you neglected to get rid of a husband before taking on with this busy lover ... who got precisely what was coming to him, if you want the truth for once!"

"Do I hear you setting yourself up to judge him, Bel?"

"Do you know anybody better qualified?"

"By what right——"

"The husband's right! Do you think I want every paper in the country linking your name—my wife's—with Lynn Summerlad's as his latest mistress, the woman who made his deserted wife so jealous she tried to murder him?"

Lucinda let her wrap fall. "If my relationship to Lynn is what you imply—then my place is here with him."

"Please yourself. But remember, the papers are going to make big capital out of this scandal in the movie colony. They've been itching for it for years, licking their chops with impatience, knowing it was bound to break some day.... Good God! what's got into you, Linda? How long do you imagine it'll be, after this affair gets into print, before the reporters will ferret out the fact that 'Linda Lee' is Mrs. Bellamy Druce? Do you want to go into a witness-box and testify against that demented creature when she's tried for murder? Do you want everybody who knows you—all your friends back home—to think what everybody in his sane mind has every right to think?"

"What you think...."

"What the devil do you care what I think? But if it comes to that, tell me this: If you aren't what people are going to say you are, what are you doing here, alone with Summerlad, in his own home, at night?"

"The Lontaines were coming to dinner, but——"

"'But'!" Bel snorted. "Oh, all right! I'll be a high-minded ass, if that'll satisfy you; I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, if that'll induce you to clear out of this before it's too late. But don't forget I'm the only one who will. His wife wouldn't—didn't. Neither will another living soul who knows you were here when this thing happened. Your only salvation now is to get back to the hotel and lie low; if you hear any rumours, be as much surprised as anybody; if you're asked any questions, know absolutely nothing. If you'll do that, and leave the rest to me, perhaps I can save you."

"You are too kind——"

"I'm not. Don't fool yourself. I'm thinking of nobody but Bellamy Druce. All I'm after is to save my name from being linked up with this rotten business. Think of yourself, as I'm thinking of myself, then. Think whether it's going to be worth the name you'll get, to have the satisfaction of this heroic gesture, this theatrical effect of sticking bravely by the side of your actor lover—so nobly wounded!—this man whose promiscuous amours have made his name a by-word even here, even in Hollywood!... But for the love of God, think quickly!"

He ceased upon a note of impatient admonishment, then, when Lucinda remained silent, changed his tone.

"I treated you badly enough, God knows! but you paid me out properly, you can afford to be magnanimous now. I've done nothing to deserve your active ill-will since you left me. And it isn't as if you could do Summerlad any good by staying. His fate's all up to the surgeons. And you can trust me to see that everything possible is done for him. I'll keep you posted, I'll come to the hotel tonight and tell you what the surgeon says."

He bent with painful effort and lifted her wrap. She took it without a word, swung it round her shoulders, turned and left the room.

Bellamy followed as far as the front door. His car was waiting on the drive, its motor running. The chauffeur, already instructed, held the tonneau door for Lucinda, closed it smartly, smartly climbed into place at the wheel. She looked back as they drew away. Bellamy stood en silhouette against the light, nursing his bandaged arm. A turn in the drive blocked out that picture, the car wheeled sharply into the public street, gathered speed. And Lucinda crouched down in her corner, chilled to her marrow by realization of the loneliness of her lot, from whom Life had stripped away even the forlorn company of her last, most dear illusion....