“And this was to be our first tea-party!” Miss Ingate half shrieked.  “I’d come—­I do come, you know, to keep an eye on things as you asked me—­I’d come, and we were just having a cosy little chat in the tank-room.  Aguilar’s gone to Colchester to get a duplicate key of the front gates.  He left me his, so I could get in and lock up after myself, and he put the water on to boil before leaving.  I said to Miss Foley, I said, up in the tank-room:  ‘Was that a ring at the door?’ But she said it wasn’t.”

“I’ve been a little deaf since I was in prison,” said Jane Foley.

“And now we come down and find you here!  I—­I hope I’ve done right.”  This, falteringly, from Miss Ingate.

“Of course you have, you silly old thing,” Audrey reassured her.  “It’s splendid!”

“Whenever I think of the police I laugh,” said Miss Ingate in an unsettled voice.  “I can’t help it.  They can’t possibly suspect.  And they’re looking everywhere, everywhere!  I can’t help laughing.”  And suddenly she burst into tears.

“Oh!  Now!  Winnie, dear.  Don’t spoil it all!” Audrey protested, jumping up.

Madame Piriac, who had hitherto maintained the most complete passivity, restrained her.

“Leave her tranquil!” murmured Madame Piriac in French.  “She is not spoiling it.  On the contrary!  One is content to see that she is a woman!”

And then Miss Ingate laughed, and blushed, and called herself names.

“And so you haven’t had my letter,” said she.  “I wish you had had it.  But what is this yachting business?  I never heard of such goings-on.  Is it your yacht?  This world is getting a bit too wonderful for me.”

The answer to these questions was cut short by rather heavy masculine footsteps approaching the door of the drawing-room.  Miss Ingate grew instantly serious.  Audrey and Jane looked at each other, and Jane Foley went quickly but calmly to the door and opened it.

“Oh!  It’s Mr. Aguilar—­returned!” she said, quietly.  “Is anything the matter, Mr. Aguilar?”

Aguilar, hat in hand, entered the room.

“Good afternoon, Aguilar,” Audrey greeted him.

“’Noon, madam,” he responded, exactly as though he had been expecting to find the mistress there.  “It’s like this.  I’ve just seen Inspector Keeble and that there detective as was here afore—­you know, madam” (nodding to Audrey) “and I fancy they’re a-coming this way, so I thought I’d better cut back and warn ye.  I don’t think they saw me.  I was too quick for ’em.  Was the bread-and-butter all right, Miss Ingate?  Thank ye.”

Miss Ingate had risen.

“I ought to go home,” she said.  “I feel sure it would be wiser for me to go home.  I never could talk to detectives.”

Jane Foley snatched at one of the four cups and saucers on the table, and put it back, all unwashed, into the china cupboard.

“Three cups will be enough for them to see, if they come,” she said, with a bright, happy smile to Audrey.  “Yes, Miss Ingate, you go home.  I’m ever so much obliged to you.  Now, I’ll go upstairs and Aguilar shall lock me in the tank-room and push the key under the door.  We are causing you a lot of trouble, Mrs. Moncreiff, but you won’t mind.  It might have been so much worse.”  She laughed as she went.