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Rh was taken was a lunatic asylum?" Odell drew a wallet from his pocket and ostentatiously selected a bill.

"The gentleman, sir; the one that used to call on her." With an effort the woman wrenched her fascinated gaze from the wallet. "I never did hear his name, but I guess he was a relation. He come in that afternoon before the movin' men was through, just as I was havin' words with the boss of them about scratchin' my hall wall-paper, and he drew me to one side and told me Mrs. Gael was crazy. He said she had been for a long time, and her family had made up their minds now to put her where maybe she'd be cured. You could have knocked me down—"

"What was this gentleman like?"

"Well, about forty, sir, I guess. Kind of handsome he was; but he looked like he'd done most everything there is and a lot of it hadn't agreed with him. He was a gentleman, though; you'd only to look at his clothes and that elegant scarf-pin to tell that. Not that it would be my taste to be wearin' a thing shaped like a skull—"

"A skull?" repeated the detective.

"The pin, sir. Some kind of a pearl, it looked like, and it must have cost a lot of money, but it was just the shape of a skull. It give me a turn to look at it." The woman paused for breath and then rattled on: "Well, after the gentleman talked to me he went up to the flat where Agnes was wonderin' what was goin' to happen next; and he told her just what he told me. After he'd gone she came down and said he had got her a fine job out in Chicago and given her the money to get there. I guess she went; for I ain't seen her again, either."

"When did all this happen?"