“I’d like to think it wasn’t,” she admitted frankly.

“I’ve seen you repeatedly upon the stage,” he told her, “and, though musical comedy is rather out of my line, I have always admired you immensely.”

She studied him once more almost wistfully.

“You look very nice,” she acknowledged, “but you don’t look at all the kind of man who admires girls who do the sort of rubbish I do on the stage.”

“What do I look like?” he asked, smiling.

“A man with a purpose,” she answered.

“I begin to think,” he ventured, “that we shall get on.  You are really a very astute young lady.”

“You are quite sure you’re not one of these amateur detectives one reads about?” she demanded.

“Certainly not,” he assured her.  “I will confess that I am interested in Victor Bidlake’s death, and I should like to discover the truth about it, but I have a reason for that which I may tell you some day.  It has nothing whatever to do with the young man himself.  To the best of my belief, I never saw or heard of him before in my life.  My interest lies with another person.  You have lost a great friend, I know.  If you felt disposed to tell me the whole story, it might make such a difference.”

She sighed.  Her confidence was returning—­also her self-pity.  The latter at once betrayed itself.

“You see,” she confided, “Victor and I were engaged to be married, so naturally I let him help me a little.  I shan’t be able to stay on here now.  They are bothering me about their bill already,” she added, with a side-glance at an envelope which stood on a table by her side.

He drew a little nearer to her.

“Miss Hyslop—­” he began.

“Daisy,” she interrupted.

“Miss Daisy Hyslop, then,” he continued, smiling, “I suggested just now that I did not want to come and bother you for information without any return.  If I can be of any assistance to you in that matter,” he added, glancing towards the envelope, “I shall be very pleased.”

She sighed gratefully.

“Just till Victor’s people return to town,” she said.  “I know that they mean to do something for me.”

“How much?” he asked.

“Two hundred pounds would keep me going,” she told him.

He wrote out a cheque.  Miss Hyslop drew a sigh of relief as she laid it on one side with the envelope.  Then she swung round in her chair to face him where he sat at the writing-table.

“I am afraid you will think that what I have to tell is very insignificant,” she confessed.  “Victor was one of those boys who always fancied themselves bored.  He was bored with polo, bored with motoring, bored with the country and bored with town.  Then quite suddenly during the last few weeks he seemed changed.  All that he would tell me was that he had found a new interest in life.  I don’t know what it was but I don’t think it was a nice one.  He seemed to drop all his old friends, too, and go about with a new set altogether—­not a nice set at all.  He used to stay out all night, and he quite gave up going to dances and places where he could take me.  Once or twice he came here in the afternoon, dead beat, without having been to bed at all, and before he could say half-a-dozen words he was asleep in my easy-chair.  He used to mutter such horrible things that I had to wake him up.”