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whisky to a policeman to show there is no ill-feeling, but it is more difficult to offer it to a lady. "I'm sure I should be very glad to be of any use," he said. "I seem somehow to have made a bad impression on you the other day, though I still haven't the least idea how. Wouldn't it really be better if we put all our cards on the table and treated one another frankly?"

"That's just what I want to do. And, as a sort of guarantee of good faith, I'm going to tell you exactly what it was that made me suspicious of you the other day. You brought me a photograph of myself and told me you had found it on the body of the man who was killed. Now, I was quite prepared to believe you; he had got, and I knew he had got, a photograph of me. But the photograph you showed me was not the one I gave him. It was a portrait taken on the same occasion, at the same sitting; but it was in a slightly different pose. So I thought, you see, that you were setting a trap for me. Your manner was so dreadfully Come-now-young-woman-I-know-all-about-you, that I really thought you were a policeman, and were trying to bluff me in some way⁠ ⁠. . . No, I haven't finished yet. There was one person living round here who had a copy of the other photograph, the same kind as you showed me. And that was Mr. Davenant, whom they arrested this morning as the murderer."

"I see. Yes, of course you must have thought I was trying it on. The fact is, I don't yet know exactly how that photograph got into my posses-