“I don’t know,” she repeated in a despairing tone. “Honestly I don’t. I—I wish I did. He never would tell me.”

“You do know, at any rate, that Captain Eales has been in some sort of connection with Mr. Du Pine, then?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Oh, several months, I should think—since last summer, anyway.”

“You didn’t mention it just now, when I was asking you.” Mallett reminded her.

“No—I’m sorry—I didn’t think it mattered,” was the lame reply.

“But it was some sort of business connection, apparently.”

“Yes—but it’s no good asking me what it was, because I simply can’t tell you. He was always frightfully mysterious about it. It—it rather frightened me.”

“What was there to be frightened about?”

She shuddered slightly. “Du Pine,” she muttered. “There’s something horrible about him. He frightens me badly.”

A few minutes later, Mallett took his leave, his mind stored with fresh facts and impressions, and a slip of typed paper in his pocket. Further questioning had wholly failed to elicit anything more from Mrs. Eales as to the nature of her husband’s business with Du Pine and the way in which she protested her ignorance convinced the detective that she was being sincere. Only one thing he was able to discover—that the business, whatever it was, had involved some kind of travelling abroad, but whither or when the journeys had been made she could not, or would not, say.

Mallett let himself out of the little study into the passage which led to the front door. As he did so, a flutter of skirts round the corner told him that the sulky maidservant had not been altogether so incurious in her mistress’s affairs as she had appeared. He caught up with her in the hall. “You were listening at the door, I suppose?” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she answered defiantly. “And what’s more, I can tell you something.”

“Well?”

“I know when the captain went abroad—and so does she, no matter what she says.”

“Never mind about your mistress. How do you know?”

“I heard him say it—same as I heard you just now—see? ‘I’m making a little trip abroad tonight,’ he said, plain as I’m saying it now.”

“When was that?”

“In the morning, when he’d come in to see her.”

“But what morning?” asked Mallett, exasperated.

“Friday the 13th,” answered the maid with gloomy conviction. “You don’t forget a date like that in a hurry. And as for starting a journey—I could have told him it would come to no good.”

Mallett’s face showed no trace of emotion, and the girl, looking eagerly to see the effect of her disclosure, was plainly disappointed.

“It’s true, what I’m telling you!” she insisted.

By way of reply, the inspector merely said: “What is your name?”

“Dawes—Florence Dawes, I am, and I——”