ning. This hair-comb"--and he
showed me a small side-comb of dark green horn--"was found close beside
her on the floor. Also a couple of hair-pins, which are different to
those in the dead woman's hair. There was a struggle, no doubt, and the
woman got away. In the poor girl's hair are two tortoiseshell
side-combs."

"But what is her injury?" I asked breathlessly.

"She's been stabbed," he replied. "Let's go back."

Together we re-entered the room, but as we did so we saw that the doctor
had now left the bedside, and was speaking earnestly with the two
detectives.

"Well, doctor?" asked the inspector in a low voice.

"She's quite dead--murder, without a doubt," was his reply. "The girl was
struck beneath the left breast--a small punctured wound, but fatal!"

"The woman who left this hair-comb behind knows something about the
affair evidently," exclaimed the inspector. "We must first discover Sir
Digby Kemsley. He seems to have been here up until eleven o'clock last
night. Then he mysteriously disappeared, and the stranger entered unseen,
two very curious and suspicious circumstances. I wonder who the poor girl
was?"

The two detectives were discussing the affair in low voices. Here was a
complete and very remarkable mystery, which, from the first, the police
told me they intended to keep to themselves, and not allow a syllable of
it to leak out to the public through the newspapers.

A woman had been there!

Did there not exist vividly in my recollection that strange encounter in
the darkness of the stairs? The jingle of the golden bangles, and the
sweet odour of that delicious perfume?

But I said nothing. I intended that the police should prosecute their
inquiries, find my friend, and establish the identity of the mysterious
girl who had met with such an untimely end presumably at the hands of
that woman who had been lurking in the darkness awaiting my departure.

Truly it was a mystery, a most remarkable problem among the many which
occur each week amid the amazing labyrinth of humanity which we term
London life.

Sir Digby Kemsley had disappeared. Where?

Half an hour after noon I had left Harrington Gardens utterly bewildered,
and returned to Albemarle Street, and at half-past one met Phrida at the
Berkeley, where, as I have already described, we lunched together.

I had revealed to her everything under seal of the secrecy placed upon me
by the police--everything save that suspicion I had had in the