“About midnight last night, the doctor believes.  That is what Bates told me.  I was so shaken on hearing his news, which was confirmed by the two detectives, that I really gave little heed to details....  She was strangled—­ a peculiarly atrocious thing where an attractive and ladylike woman is concerned.  I have never spoken to her, but have met her at odd times on the stairs.  I was immeasurably shocked, I assure you.  In fact, I was on the point of telegraphing an excuse to you for this evening, but the Chief Inspector—­ Winter, I think his name is—­ said it would suffice for his purpose if I met him at my flat about eleven o’clock, as he was engaged on other inquiries which would occupy the intervening hours.”

“But if the news of this dastardly crime only reached you tonight at Waterloo Station, and you have no personal acquaintance with Mrs. Lester, what evidence can you give that will assist the police?”

“Mrs. Lester received a visitor last night, an incident so unusual that I, who heard him arrive, and Bates, who was in my sitting room when we both heard him depart, commented on the strangeness of it.  That, I suppose, is the reason why I am in request by Scotland Yard.”

“You say ‘him.’  How did you know it was a man?  Did you see him?”

“Er—­ that was impossible.  We were in my flat, behind its closed door.  Bates and I deduced his sex from the sound of his footsteps.”

Again Theydon nearly stammered.  Events had certainly turned in the most amazing way.  Instead of carrying himself almost in the manner of a judge, he was figuring rather as an unwilling witness in the hands of a skilled and merciless cross-examining counsel.

“Did the police officers supply any theory of motive for the crime?  Was this poor woman killed for the sake of her few trinkets?”

By this time Theydon was stung into a species of revolt.  It was he, not Forbes, who should be snapping out searching questions.

“I regret to say that my nerves were not sufficiently under control at Waterloo that I should listen carefully to each word,” he said, almost stiffly.  “Bates had picked up such information as was available; but he, though an ex-sergeant in the Army, was so upset as to be hardly coherent.  When I meet the detectives in the course of another hour I shall probably gather something definite and reliable in the way of details.”

Forbes laid the pipe which he had filled but not lighted on the table.  He poured out a glass of port and drank it.

“Try that,” he said, pushing the decanter toward Theydon.  “They cannot trouble you greatly.  You have so little to tell.”

“No, thanks.  Nothing more for me tonight until the Scotland Yard men have cleared out.”

Forbes rose as he spoke and strode the length of the room and back with the air of a man debating some weighty and difficult point.