“I hope to goodness, she don’t take it into her head she can fly,” thought Brencherly.  Aloud he said:  “Say, do you mind if I come up there and sit with you a while?  I’m sort of lonesome here myself.”  He had already moved silently forward, and was slowly mounting the iron ladder—­very slowly, a rung at a time, talking all the while in a cordial, friendly voice.  He feared she might take fright and precipitate herself to the stones below.  But her mood was otherwise.

“I don’t mind,” she said.  “I don’t seem to know just how I got here, and perhaps you can tell me.  I just woke up and found myself sleepin’ on somebody’s bed.  I thought at first that I was back in the ward, when I found my feet was tied up.  Then when I got loose and had time to feel around, I saw ’twas some strange place.  Then the fire escapes sort of looked nice and cool, so I came out.”

By this time her visitor had climbed beside her and had seated himself on the landing in such fashion that no move of hers could dislodge either of the strange couple.  He noted with relief that they were outside of a door instead of a window, as was the case on all the floors below.  The drying roof of the hotel only was above them.  He did not wish this extraordinary interview to be interrupted.  His airy nest-mate seemed amenable to conversation.

“Well, well!” he resumed, “so that was the way you worked it.  Wouldn’t that make the doctor mad, though—­what was the old duffer’s name, anyway?  You did tell me, but I’ve got such a poor memory—­now, yours is good, I’ll bet a hat.”

“Well,” she said, “’tain’t what it used to be, but I’ll never forget old Malbey’s name as long as I live, nor what he looks like, either.  He looks like a potato with sprouts for eyes.”

Brencherly laughed.  He had a very clear, if unflattering, picture of the learned physician.

“But, say,” she cried suddenly, “you’re not trying to get me, are you?”

“Oh, I’m no friend of the doctor’s,” he said easily.  “Why, I brought you up here to hide you away safely.  That was one of my rooms you woke up in.  You see, I found you on a bench in the park out there, and you went to sleep so suddenly right while I was talking to you, that I thought you must be tired out.”

She leaned forward, peering at him through the dusk.  Her white pinched face looked skull-like in the faint light.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “seems to me that I remember some woman saying she killed Victor Mahr, and me getting angry about it—­and then I don’t seem to know just what happened.  Well, young man, I’m much obliged to you, I’m sure.  ’Tain’t often an old woman like me gets so well taken care of.”

“But why,” he questioned softly, “were you so annoyed with the other lady?  She had just as much right as you had, I suppose, to kill the gentleman?”

“She had not!” she shrilled.  “She had not!” Then lowering her voice to a whisper, she murmured confidentially:  “My name ain’t Welles!”