“No,” said Winter.  “By a most remarkable chance, Ann Rogers was given leave to spend the night with her father, who lives in Camden Town.  He is an old man and was taken ill last evening.  He believes he asked some one to telegraph to his daughter, asking her to come to him.  She certainly received a telegram and as certainly did visit him.  Of course, that phase of the affair will be cleared up thoroughly, but the main facts are indisputable.  Ann Rogers has her own latchkey.  As Mrs. Lester usually sat up late, being a lover of books, and seldom stirred before ten o’clock, the maid waited until that hour before bringing her mistress’s cup of tea.  That stain on the carpet near the door shows where the tray fell from her hands.”

Sometimes an artist obtains the strongest effect by one deft sweep of the brush.  Winter, though he would have blushed if described as an artist in words, had achieved a similar result by his concluding sentence.  Theydon pictured the scene.  He saw the limp form thrown across the bed, the distorted face, the hands and arms posed grotesquely.

He heard the shrill scream of the terrified servant, an elderly woman whom Bates described as “a quiet body,” and could imagine the clatter of the laden tray as it dropped from nerveless fingers.  A sort of fury rose within him.  Mrs. Lester had been done to death in a horrible and insensate way, and no matter who suffered, be he millionaire or pauper, the wretch who committed the crime should be made to pay the penalty of the law.

In that moment he forgot Evelyn Forbes, and thought only of the fair and gracious woman whose agonized spirit had taken flight under the compulsion of the tiger grip of some human brute now moving among his fellow-creatures unknown and unsuspected.  It was inconceivable that Forbes should be guilty, but why should he not avow his acquaintance with the victim, and thus aid the police in their quest?

He glowered savagely at the telltale stain, and vowed to rid his conscience of an incubus.  He would wait till the morrow and force Forbes to come out into the open.  Otherwise—­

“You wish you had the murderer here now?”

Furneaux spoke softly, and with no trace of his wonted irony, but Theydon was aware that once more the little detective had peered into his very soul.

“Yes,” he said, and there was a new gravity in his tone.  “I do wish that.  I have never before been brought in contact with a crime of this magnitude.  It conveys a sort of personal responsibility.  To think that I was in my room, reading about aviation, while a woman’s life was being choked out of her within a few feet of where I was seated!  O, it is monstrous!  Let me tell you two, here and now, that if I can do anything to bring Mrs. Lester’s slayer to justice, you can count on me, no matter what the cost.”

“I’m sure you mean what you say, Mr. Theydon,” said Winter soothingly.  “Well, I suppose we can do no more tonight.  I have little else to tell you—­”