“Must I go in there?” she asked, pointing, with an admirable simulation of nervous excitement, to a half-shut door at her left.  “Is there where it happened?  Arthur, do you suppose that there is where it happened?”

“No, no, Miss,” the officer made haste to assure her.  “If you are Miss Strange” (Violet bowed), “I need hardly say that the woman was struck in her bedroom.  The door beside you leads into the parlour, or as she would have called it, her work-room.  You needn’t be afraid of going in there.  You will see nothing but the disorder of her boxes.  They were pretty well pulled about.  Not all of them though,” he added, watching her as closely as the dim light permitted.  “There is one which gives no sign of having been tampered with.  It was done up in wrapping paper and is addressed to you, which in itself would not have seemed worthy of our attention had not these lines been scribbled on it in a man’s handwriting:  ‘Send without opening.’”

“How odd!” exclaimed the little minx with widely opened eyes and an air of guileless innocence.  “Whatever can it mean?  Nothing serious I am sure, for the woman did not even know me.  She was employed to do this work by Madame Pirot.”

“Didn’t you know that it was to be done here?”

“No.  I thought Madame Pirot’s own girls did her embroidery for her.”

“So that you were surprised—­”

“Wasn’t I!”

“To get our message.”

“I didn’t know what to make of it.”

The earnest, half-injured look with which she uttered this disclaimer, did its appointed work.  The detective accepted her for what she seemed and, oblivious to the reporter’s satirical gesture, crossed to the work-room door, which he threw wide open with the remark: 

“I should be glad to have you open that box in our presence.  It is undoubtedly all right, but we wish to be sure.  You know what the box should contain?”

“Oh, yes, indeed; pillow-cases and sheets, with a big S embroidered on them.”

“Very well.  Shall I undo the string for you?”

“I shall be much obliged,” said she, her eye flashing quickly about the room before settling down upon the knot he was deftly loosening.

Her brother, gazing indifferently in from the doorway, hardly noticed this look; but the reporter at his back did, though he failed to detect its penetrating quality.

“Your name is on the other side,” observed the detective as he drew away the string and turned the package over.

The smile which just lifted the corner of her lips was not in answer to this remark, but to her recognition of her employer’s handwriting in the words under her name:  Send without opening.  She had not misjudged him.

“The cover you may like to take off yourself,” suggested the officer, as he lifted the box out of its wrapper.

“Oh, I don’t mind.  There’s nothing to be ashamed of in embroidered linen.  Or perhaps that is not what you are looking for?”