e amateurs. Where did you learn to
write like that?"

Somehow, her praise was like a tonic.

"Do you like it?" he asked eagerly.

"Oh! my likes or dislikes don't matter," she replied. "It's good stuff.
You'll find the account in there. If you'd like to pay me, I'd like to
have the money."

He glanced at the neat little bill and took out his pocketbook.

"Sit down for a minute," he begged. "I'm stuck this morning--can't write
a line. Take my easy-chair and smoke a cigarette--I have nothing else
to offer you."

For a moment she seemed about to refuse. Then she flung herself into his
easy-chair, took a cigarette, and, holding it between her lips, almost
scarlet against the pallor of her cheeks, stretched upwards towards the
match which he was holding.

"Stella and her boy were over to see me last night," she announced, a
little abruptly.

"The young lady with the ermines," he murmured.

"And her boy, Felix Martin. It was through him they came--I could see
that all right. He was trying all the time to pump me about you."

"About me?"

"Oh! you needn't trouble to look surprised," she remarked. "I guess you
remember the bee he had in his bonnet that night."

"Mistook me for some one, didn't he?" Philip murmured.

She nodded.

"Kind of queer you don't read our newspapers! It was a guy named
Romilly--Douglas Romilly--who disappeared from the Waldorf Hotel. Strange
thing about it," she went on, "is that I saw photographs of him in the
newspapers, and I can't recognise even a likeness."

"This Mr. Felix Martin doesn't agree with you, apparently," Philip
observed.

"He don't go by the photographs," Martha Grimes explained. "He believes
that he crossed from Liverpool with this Mr. Douglas Romilly, and that
you," she continued, crossing her legs and smoothing down her skirt to
hide her shabby shoes, "are so much like him that he came down last night
to see if there was anything else he could find out from me before he
paid a visit to police headquarters."

There was a moment's silence. Philip was apparently groping for a match,
and the girl was keeping her head studiously turned away from him.

"What business is it of his?"

"There was a reward offered. Don't know as that would make much
difference to Felix Martin, though. According to Stella's account, he is
pretty well a millionaire already."

"It would be more useful to you, wouldn't it?" Philip remarked.

"Five hundred dollars!" Martha sighed. "Don't