“Very good.  Shall it be at once?  I have a taxi at the door.”

But she failed to see the necessity of any such hurry.  With sudden dignity she replied: 

“That won’t do.  If I go to this house it must be under suitable conditions.  I shall have to ask my brother to accompany me.”

“Your brother!”

“Oh, he’s safe.  He—­he knows.”

“Your brother knows?” Her visitor, with less control than usual, betrayed very openly his uneasiness.

“He does and—­approves.  But that’s not what interests us now, only so far as it makes it possible for me to go with propriety to that dreadful house.”

A formal bow from the other and the words: 

“They may expect you, then.  Can you say when?”

“Within the next hour.  But it will be a useless concession on my part,” she pettishly complained.  “A place that has been gone over by a dozen detectives is apt to be brushed clean of its cobwebs, even if such ever existed.”

“That’s the difficulty,” he acknowledged; and did not dare to add another word; she was at that particular moment so very much the great lady, and so little his confidential agent.

He might have been less impressed, however, by this sudden assumption of manner, had he been so fortunate as to have seen how she employed the three quarters of an hour’s delay for which she had asked.

She read those neglected newspapers, especially the one containing the following highly coloured narration of this ghastly crime: 

“A door ajar—­an empty hall—­a line of sinister looking blotches marking a guilty step diagonally across the flagging—­silence—­ and an unmistakable odour repugnant to all humanity,—­such were the indications which met the eyes of Officer O’Leary on his first round last night, and led to the discovery of a murder which will long thrill the city by its mystery and horror.

“Both the house and the victim are well known.”  Here followed a description of the same and of Mrs. Doolittle’s manner of life in her ancient home, which Violet hurriedly passed over to come to the following: 

“As far as one can judge from appearances, the crime happened in this wise:  Mrs. Doolittle had been in her kitchen, as the tea-kettle found singing on the stove goes to prove, and was coming back through her bedroom, when the wretch, who had stolen in by the front door which, to save steps, she was unfortunately in the habit of leaving on the latch till all possibility of customers for the day was over, sprang upon her from behind and dealt her a swinging blow with the poker he had caught up from the hearthstone.