‘You saw the notice of Miss Bamberger’s death, I suppose,’ he said, turning his grey eyes to hers.

He had not alluded to the subject during the voyage.

‘Yes,’ Margaret answered, wondering why he broached it now.

‘The notice said that she died of heart failure, from shock,’ Griggs continued.  ’I should like to know what you think about it, as you were with her when she died.  Have you any idea that she may have died of anything else?’

‘No.’  Margaret was surprised.  ‘The doctor said it was that.’

’I know.  I only wanted to have your own impression.  I believe that when people die of heart failure in that way, they often make desperate efforts to explain what has happened, and go on trying to talk when they can only make inarticulate sounds.  Do you remember if it was at all like that?’

‘Not at all,’ Margaret said.  ’She whispered the last words she spoke, but they were quite distinct.  Then she drew three or four deep breaths, and all at once I saw that she was dead, and I called the doctor from the next room.’

‘I suppose that might be heart failure,’ said Griggs thoughtfully.  ‘You are quite sure that you thought it was only that, are you not?’

‘Only what?’ Margaret asked with growing surprise.

’Only fright, or the result of having been half-suffocated in the crowd.’

‘Yes, I think I am sure.  What do you mean?  Why do you insist so much?’

‘It’s of no use to tell other people,’ said Griggs, ’but you may just as well know.  I found her lying in a heap behind a door, where there could not have been much of a crowd.’

‘Perhaps she had taken refuge there, to save herself,’ Margaret suggested.

’Possibly.  But there was another thing.  When I got home I found that there was a little blood on the palm of my hand.  It was the hand I had put under her waist when I lifted her.’

‘Do you mean to say you think she was wounded?’ Margaret asked, opening her eyes wide.

‘There was blood on the inside of my hand,’ Griggs answered, ’and I had no scratch to account for it.  I know quite well that it was on the hand that I put under her waist—­a little above the waist, just in the middle of her back.’

‘But it would have been seen afterwards.’

’On the dark red silk she wore?  Not if there was very little of it.  The doctor never thought of looking for such a wound.  Why should he?  He had not the slightest reason for suspecting that the poor girl had been murdered.’

‘Murdered?’

Margaret looked hard at Griggs, and then she suddenly shuddered from head to foot.  She had never before had such a sensation; it was like a shock from an electric current at the instant when the contact is made, not strong enough to hurt, but yet very disagreeable.  She felt it at the moment when her mind connected what Griggs was saying with the dying girl’s last words, ‘he did it’; and with little Ida’s look of horror when she had watched Mr. Van Torp’s lips while he was talking to himself on the boat-deck of the Leofric; and again, with the physical fear of the man that always came over her when she had been near him for a little while.  When she spoke to Griggs again the tone of her voice had changed.