Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 42).djvu/300

[A new detective method is such a rare thing that it is with unusual pleasure we continue the adventures of Judith Lee, the fortunate possessor of a gift which gives her a place apart in detective fiction. Mr. Marsh's heroine is one whose fortunes, we predict with confidence, will be followed with the greatest interest from month to month.]

 have sometimes thought that this gift of mine for reading words as they issue from people's lips places me, with or without my will, in the position of the eavesdropper. There have been occasions on which, before I knew it, I have been made cognisant of conversations, of confidences, which were meant to be sacred; and, though such knowledge has been acquired through no fault of mine, I have felt ashamed, just as if I had been listening at a key-hole, and I have almost wished that the power which Nature gave me, and which years of practice have made perfect, was not mine at all. On the other hand, there have been times when I was very glad indeed that I was able to play the part of eavesdropper. As, to very strict purists, this may not sound a pleasant confession to make, I will give an instance of the kind of thing I mean.

I suppose I was about seventeen; I know I had just put my hair up, which had grown to something like a decent length since it had come in contact with the edge of that doughty Scottish chieftain's—MacGregor's—knife. My mother was not very well. My father was reluctant to leave her. It looked as if the summer holiday which had been promised me was in peril, when two acquaintances, Mr. and Mrs. Travers, rather than that I should lose it altogether, offered to take me under their wing. They were going for a little tour in Switzerland, proposing to spend most of their time at Interlaken, and my parents, feeling that I should be perfectly safe with them, accepted their proffered chaperonage. Everything went well until we got to Interlaken. There they met some friends who were going on a climbing expedition, and, as Mr. and Mrs. Travers were both keen mountaineers, they were very eager to join them. I was the only difficulty in their way. They could not say exactly how long they would be absent, but probably a week; and what was to become of me in that great hotel there all alone? They protested that it would be quite impossible to leave me; they would have to give up that climb; and I believe they would have done so if what seemed to be a solution of the difficulty had not turned up.

The people in the hotel were for the most part very sociable folk, as people in such places are apt to be. Among other persons whose acquaintance we had made was a middle-aged widow, a Mrs. Hawthorne. When she heard of what Mr. and Mrs. Travers wanted to do, and how they could not do it because of me, she volunteered, during their absence, to occupy their place as my chaperon, assuring them that every possible care should be taken of me.

In the hotel were stopping a brother and sister, a Mr. and Miss Sterndale. With them I had grown quite friendly. Mr. Sterndale I should have set down as twenty-five or twenty-six, and his sister as a year or two younger. From the day on which I had first seen them they had shown an inclination for my society; and, to speak quite frankly, on different occasions Mr. Sterndale had paid me what seemed to me to be delicate little attentions which were very dear to my maiden heart. I had some difficulty in inducing people to treat me as if I were grown up. After a few minutes' conversation even