“Thanks to your late gentleman, Piper knows all about dogs, and all ’e requires, Modam, to set ’im up as a dogfancier, so to speak, is a moderate bit o’ money.  As ’e says ’imself, five hundred pound would do it easy.  If I may make so bold, that’s what reely brought me ’ere, Mrs. Crofton.  It do seem to us both, that, under the circumstances, you might feel disposed to find the money?”

Enid looked down as she answered, falteringly:  “I told Piper some time ago that it was quite impossible for me to do anything of the kind.”

In her fear and distress she uttered the words more loudly than she was aware, and the woman looked round at the closed door with an apprehensive look:  “Don’t speak so loud.  We don’t want to tell everyone our business,” she said sharply.

Now she came quite close up to her victim, for by now Enid Crofton knew that she was in very truth this woman’s victim.

“You think it over,” whispered Madame Flora.  “We’re not in a ’urry to a day or two.  And look here, Modam, I’ll be open with you!  If you’ll do that for Piper, it’ll be in full discharge of anything you owe ’im—­d’you take my meaning?”

Enid Crofton got up slowly from her chair almost as an automaton might have done.  She wanted to say that she did not in the least know what Mrs. Piper did mean.  But somehow her lips refused to form the words.  She was afraid even to shake her head.

“I told you a fib just now”—­Mrs. Piper’s voice again dropped to a whisper.  “Piper’s made a clean breast o’ the matter to me, and I do think as what it’s common justice to admit that my ’usband’s evidence at that inquest was worth more than twenty-five pound to you.  It wasn’t what Piper said; it was what ’e didn’t say that mattered, Mrs. Crofton.  It’s been on ’is mind awful—­I’ll take my Bible oath on that.  But ’live and let live,’ that’s my motter.  We don’t want to do anything unkind, but we’re in a fix ourselves—­”

“I haven’t got five hundred pounds,” said Enid Crofton desperately; “that’s God’s truth, Mrs. Piper.”

To that assertion Madame Flora made no direct answer; she only observed, in a quiet conversational tone, and speaking no longer in a whisper.  “The insurance gent told Piper as what ’e was not entirely satisfied, and ’e said as ’e’d be pleased to see Piper any time if anything ’appened as could throw further light on the Colonel’s death.  ’An extraordinary occurrence’—­that’s what the insurance people’s gentleman called it, Mrs. Crofton—­’an extraordinary occurrence.’”

And then Enid was stung into saying a very unwise thing.  “The Coroner did not think it an extraordinary occurrence,” she said quietly.

“’E says sometimes as what ’e ought to give ’imself up and say what ’e saw,” went on Mrs. Piper with seeming irrelevance.

There was another brief pause:  “If you ’aven’t got five hundred pounds, Modam, I take it the insurance money has not yet been paid, for it was a matter of two thousand pounds—­or so Piper understood from that party what came down to make enquiries.”