“Oh, Mr. Magnus isn’t watching over me,” said my companion quickly.  “There is a certain thing he desires me to do.  Once that is done, I don’t believe he will bother me any more.  I left his note with you this morning.  Did you bring it with you?”

“Yes,” I said, and got it out of my pocket and handed it to her.  “But really, Mrs. Magnus,” I continued, “you don’t mean to tell me seriously that you saw him write this?”

“I certainly did.  He wrote it under my eyes, sitting at that desk three nights ago.”

Again I looked at her to see if she was speaking seriously.

“I see you do not believe me,” she added.

“Pardon me, Mrs. Magnus,” I corrected; “of course I believe you—­that is, I believe that you believe.  But I cannot but think you are being imposed upon in some way.”

A flush of anger crept into her cheeks.

“Do you think I am a woman easily imposed upon?” she asked.  “Let me tell you the story, Mr. Lester.”

“That is what I have been hoping you would do,” I said.  “I am very anxious to hear it.”

“After my husband’s death,” she began, “I decided to use this room as my office or workroom.  I went through his desk and cleared it out.  There were no papers of importance there; but I found one thing which gave me a shock.  That was a letter, pushed back and I suppose forgotten in one of the drawers, which proved to me that my husband had been unfaithful.”

I was not surprised, of course, after what Godfrey had told me, but I managed to murmur some polite incredulity.

“Oh, it was true,” she went on bitterly.  “I knew he had grown away from me, but I never suspected that—­that he could be so vulgar!” That, of course, was the way in which it would appeal to her—­as vulgar.

“It is that which is worrying him now,” she added.

“You mean—­”

“No matter.  He shall have the money to-night, and that will be ended.  Let me go on with my story.  As I said, I began to use this room.  I kept my papers in the desk yonder, and worked there regularly every day.  But one morning, when I came in, I noticed something unusual—­an odor of tobacco.  You know Mr. Magnus was a great smoker.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You may have noticed that he always smoked a heavy black cigar which he had made for him especially in Cuba.  It had a quite distinctive odor.”

“Yes,” I said again.  I had noticed more than once the sweet, heavy aroma of Magnus’ cigars.

“I recognized the odor at once,” went on Mrs. Magnus.  “It was from one of his cigars.  When I opened the desk, I found a little heap of ashes on his ash tray, which I had been using to keep pins in, and the remnant of the cigar he had been smoking.”

“He?” I repeated.  “But why should you think—­”

“Wait,” she interrupted, “till you hear the rest.  I cleaned off the tray and went through my day’s work as usual.  The next morning I found the same thing—­and something more.  Some one had been trying to write on the pad of paper on the desk.”