ll ask Mr.
Carter if I can't be made a Dame!"

At seven o'clock Tuppence volunteered to go and make some tea. She
returned with a tray, containing the teapot and four cups.

"Who's the other cup for?" inquired Julius.

"The prisoner, of course. I suppose we might call her that?"

"Taking her tea seems a kind of anticlimax to last night," said Julius
thoughtfully.

"Yes, it does," admitted Tuppence. "But, anyway, here goes. Perhaps
you'd both come, too, in case she springs on me, or anything. You see,
we don't know what mood she'll wake up in."

Sir James and Julius accompanied her to the door.

"Where's the key? Oh, of course, I've got it myself."

She put it in the lock, and turned it, then paused.

"Supposing, after all, she's escaped?" she murmured in a whisper.

"Plumb impossible," replied Julius reassuringly.

But Sir James said nothing.

Tuppence drew a long breath and entered. She heaved a sigh of relief as
she saw that Mrs. Vandemeyer was lying on the bed.

"Good morning," she remarked cheerfully. "I've brought you some tea."

Mrs. Vandemeyer did not reply. Tuppence put down the cup on the table
by the bed and went across to draw up the blinds. When she turned, Mrs.
Vandemeyer still lay without a movement. With a sudden fear clutching
at her heart, Tuppence ran to the bed. The hand she lifted was cold as
ice.... Mrs. Vandemeyer would never speak now....

Her cry brought the others. A very few minutes sufficed. Mrs. Vandemeyer
was dead--must have been dead some hours. She had evidently died in her
sleep.

"If that isn't the cruellest luck," cried Julius in despair.

The lawyer was calmer, but there was a curious gleam in his eyes.

"If it is luck," he replied.

"You don't think--but, say, that's plumb impossible--no one could have
got in."

"No," admitted the lawyer. "I don't see how they could. And yet--she is
on the point of betraying Mr. Brown, and--she dies. Is it only chance?"

"But how----"

"Yes, HOW! That is what we must find out." He stood there silently,
gently stroking his chin. "We must find out," he said quietly, and
Tuppence felt that if she was Mr. Brown she would not like the tone of
those simple words.

Julius's glance went to the window.

"The window's open," he remarked. "Do you think----"

Tuppence shook her head.

"The balcony only goes along as far as the boudoir. We were there."

"He might have slipped out----" suggested Julius.

But Sir James interrupted