“So you did it!” Frake said. “A good little scheme, my girl, and it almost succeeded, too. There wasn’t a thing to point the finger of suspicion at you except the doctor’s statement that Mrs. Lennek had been dead for an hour when he arrived. That — and the telephone girl’s evidence. You were as good as safe, except from your own conscience and sense of guilt. Yet you confessed—”
“Oh, I had to!” she cried. “Don’t you understand? You were going to fix it on Mr. Purden. You were going to send him to the electric chair. I had to save him. I love him, you see!”
“I see!” Detective Frake said.
“And I— I don’t care what becomes of me — if he is saved.”
Marie Dolge looked for a moment at Madison Purden. His face had gone white, but there was no love in his eyes as he looked at her.
“Well, young woman —” Frake began.
“Just one moment,” she begged. “I— I’ve told you everything, I guess.”
“Enough, at least.”
“Then — you see, I didn’t use all the poison, and so —”
Frake sprang toward her, the others uttered a cry of horror. But Detective Frake was too late. The little vial she held in her hand was emptied down her throat. Frake knew that deadly poison. It was an acid that killed almost as soon as it touched the tongue. Marie Dolge had imposed and paid the penalty.
Frake walked through the hall later with Attorney Garder.
“Matter of fact,” Frake said, “I thought Purden did it. The criminal’s sense of guilt is the detective’s greatest ally.”