silence was so marked, he felt it an excuse for stealing
another glance in her direction. She was not looking his way but at a
door in the partition wall on her right; and the look was one very akin
to anxious fear. The next moment he understood it. The door burst open,
and a young girl bounded into the room, with the merry cry:

"All ready, mother. I'm glad we are going to the Clarendon. I hate
hotels where people die almost before your eyes."

What the mother said at this outburst is immaterial. What the detective
did is not. Keeping on his way, he reached the door, but not to open
it wider; rather to close it softly but with unmistakable decision. The
cloak which enveloped the girl was red, and full enough to be called
voluminous.

"Who is this?" demanded the girl, her indignant glances flashing from
one to the other.

"I don't know," faltered the mother in very evident distress. "He says
he has a right to ask us questions and he has been asking questions
about--about--"

"Not about me," laughed the girl, with a toss of her head Mr. Gryce
would have corrected in one of his grandchildren. "He can have nothing
to say about me." And she began to move about the room in an aimless,
half-insolent way.

Mr. Gryce stared hard at the few remaining belongings of the two women,
lying in a heap on the table, and half musingly, half deprecatingly,
remarked:

"The person who stooped wore a long red cloak. Probably you preceded
your daughter, Mrs. Watkins."

The lady thus brought to the point made a quick gesture towards the
girl who suddenly stood still, and, with a rising colour in her cheeks,
answered, with some show of resolution on her own part:

"You say your name is Gryce and that you have a right to address me thus
pointedly on a subject which you evidently regard as serious. That is
not exact enough for me. Who are you, sir? What is your business?"

"I think you have guessed it. I am a detective from Headquarters. What
I want of you I have already stated. Perhaps this young lady can tell me
what you cannot. I shall be pleased if this is so."

"Caroline"--Then the mother broke down. "Show the gentleman what you
picked up from the lobby floor last night."

The girl laughed again, loudly and with evident bravado, before she
threw the cloak back and showed what she had evidently been holding in
her hand from the first, a sharp-pointed, gold-handled paper-cutter.

"It was lying there and I picked it up. I don't