rwards replaced?

I scarcely dared to glance at it, lest I should betray any unusual
interest. I felt that Phrida's eyes were watching me, that she suspected
my knowledge.

I took up the magazine idly, glanced at it, and, replacing it, returned
to her side.

"Well," she asked, "are you ready?"

And then together we descended to the car.

All the way up to Abbey Road she hardly spoke. She seemed unusually pale
and haggard. I asked her what was the matter, but she only replied in a
faint, unnatural voice--

"Matter? Why nothing--nothing, I assure you, Teddy!"

I did not reply. I gazed upon the pretty, pale-faced figure at my side in
wonder and yet in fear. I loved her--ah! I loved her well and truly, with
all my soul. Yet was it possible that by means of that knife lying there
so openly in that West-End drawing-room a woman's life had been
treacherously taken.

Had my friend Digby, the fugitive, actually committed the crime?

When I put the whole matter clearly and with common-sense before myself,
I was bound to admit that I had a strong belief of his innocence.

What would those finger-prints reveal?

The thought held me breathless. Yes, to satisfy myself I would
surreptitiously secure finger-prints of my well-beloved and then in
secret compare them with those found in Sir Digby's rooms.

But how? I was reflecting as the car passed by Apsley House and into the
Park on its way to St. John's Wood.

Was I acting honestly? I doubted her, I quite admit. Yet I felt that if I
took some object--a glass, or something with a polished surface--that she
had touched, and submitted it to examination, I would be acting as a
sneak.

The idea was repugnant to me. Yet with that horrible suspicion obsessing
me I felt that I must do something in order to satisfy myself.

What inane small talk I uttered in the Leslies' big, over-furnished
drawing-room I know not. All I remember is that I sat with some insipid
girl whose hair was flaxen and as colourless as her mind, sipping my tea
while I listened to her silly chatter about a Cook's tour she had just
taken through Holland and Belgium. The estimable Cook is, alas!
responsible for much tea-table chatter among the fair sex.

Our hostess was an obese, flashily-dressed, dogmatic lady, the wife of
the chairman of a big drapery concern who, having married her eldest
daughter to a purchased knighthood, fondly believed herself to be in
society--thanks to the "paid paragraphs" in t