reet, but again
she declared, and with truth, that she had no recollection of him.

"Perhaps, Miss Tennison, you knew him under some other name," I said,
and then proceeded to describe minutely the handsome, rather
foreign-looking man who had bribed me to give that certificate of
death.

"Have you an uncle?" I asked presently, recollecting that the man at
Stretton Street had declared the victim to be his niece.

"I have an uncle--my mother's brother--he lives in Liverpool."

Again I fell to wondering whether the beautiful girl before me was
actually the same person whose death I had certified to be due to
heart disease, and who, according to the official records, had been
cremated. She was very like--and yet? Well, the whole affair was a
problem which each hour became more inscrutable.

Still the fact remained that Gabrielle Tennison had disappeared
suddenly on November the seventh, the night I had met with my amazing
adventure.

In reply to my further questions, as she sat staring blankly into my
face with those great dark eyes of hers, I at last gathered that
Doctor Moroni, hearing of her case from a specialist in Harley Street,
to whom she had been taken by the police-surgeon, had called upon her
mother, and had had a long interview with her. Afterwards he had
called daily, and later Mrs. Tennison had allowed him to take her
daughter to Florence to consult another specialist at the hospital of
Santa Maria Nuova.

"I think you know a Mrs. Cullerton," I remarked at last.

The effect of my words upon her was almost electrical.

"Dolly Cullerton!" she shrieked. "Ah! Don't mention that woman's name!
Please do not mention her!"

"I believed that she was a friend of yours," I said, much surprised.

"Friend? No, enemy--a bitter enemy!"

"Then you have quarrelled? She was once your friend--eh? Over what
have you quarrelled?"

"That is my own affair!" she snapped in apparent annoyance. "If you
know her, don't trust her. I warn you!" Then she added: "She is a
wicked woman."

"And her husband, Jack?"

"Ah! he's an excellent fellow--far too good for her!"

"Why do you entertain such antipathy toward her?" I asked. "Do tell
me, because it will make my inquiries so very much easier."

"Inquiries? What inquiries are you making?"

I was silent for a moment, then looking straight into her eyes, I
replied very seriously:

"I am making inquiries, Miss Tennison, into what happened to you
during those days when y