The Verdict by Edgar Saltus

"I don't know where to begin."

"Then begin at the end."

The advice that Ten Eyck Jones gave Philip Rochester was entirely professional. Rochester was a man of what is snobbishly known as position. So was Jones, but his position was that of "bestseller. " Hence the professional quality of the advice. In life, as in letters, there is nothing like getting to the point.

Rochester, indicating a chair, dropped into another.

The chair that he indicated stood next to a table, which, heaped with costly futilities, had a cover that extended to the floor. The room itself -- large, wide, furnished gravely with infinite taste, and lighted by two shaded lamps -- was somber and, at the moment, soundless. The windows, high and draped, gave on one of the quietest streets in the metropolitan bedlam.

Jones, seating himself, got out a cigarette-case and looked about for a match, wondering, as he did so, what was up.

Fifteen minutes earlier, as he was rising from dinner at his club, Rochester had telephoned, begging him to come at once; and it was in response to that hurry call from a man whose college pal he had been that the novelist was then with the millionaire. That something was wrong with his friend Jones had already noted, though the shaded lamps did not reveal the fact that Rochester's face was ashen.

"You tell me to begin at the end," Rochester resumed. "I will. Nina is dead."

Jones sat back. In the surprise of the announcement his cigarette-case slipped from him.

Nina was -- or now, more exactly, had been -- Rochester's wife. Only the day before Jones had seen her on Fifth Avenue; yet, as always, in seeing her, he omitted to admire. She was amazingly pretty, but behind her cameo features he had divined the shrew.

Rochester half raised a hand, glanced at it, let it fall. Still under thirty, he had an ascetic face and dense, black hair. As usual with him, he was dressed in a threadbare fashion which, for a man of large means, is eminently correct.

Jones's appearance was less fastidious. Though a novelist, he did not look it. He looked like a man of the world to whom much is absurd and nothing important. None the less, the surprise of the announcement shook him a little. In an effort to rally, he leaned over, groped for his cigarette-case, and, not finding it, straightened.

Rochester, whom the mummery perhaps perplexed, motioned.

"It was in this room, shortly before dinner. She had just entered the house. I was standing where you are seated. She came in, looked at me, gasped, half circled, crumpled. I sent for a physician -- not hers, for the life of me I could not remember his name -- but for anyone. In relatively no time an imbecile named Folsom appeared. He said it might be her heart."

"Good Lord! " exclaimed Jones, who, however indifferent to the lady, was a human being and found but that.

"But," Rochester continued, "Folsom said that as he had not previously attended her he would have to notify the authorities. That is why I telephoned. I suppose the coroner may be here at any moment."

Jones sat up.

"Phil, you have my deepest sympathy. If there were words of consolation, I would express them. There are none."

As Jones spoke, he considered the picture -- Nina Rochester strolling in and falling dead. It was as extraordinary as his own fiction, which, however, is not saying much.

"But," he added, "don't you see, there will have to be a postmortem?"