“Lummie!” thought Alleyn. “Now we’re getting it.” He began to question her systematically and carefully, taking pains not to alarm her too much, so that gradually she became more composed, and out of her disjointed half-phrases an intelligible sequence of events began to appear. It seemed that on the last evening in the ship, when she paid her poker debts, Liversidge actually went into her cabin with her. She took the money from her suit-case while he was there, and gave him the ten pounds she owed him. At the same time she took out a ten-pound note which she subsequently changed at the first saloon bar and paid out in tips. Liversidge told her that she was a fool to leave her money in an unlocked suit-case. She told him she had lost the key of the suit-case and said she was not going to bother about it, now, at the end of the voyage. He repeated his warning and left her. Next morning, when she returned from breakfast to pack her luggage, she prodded the leather note-case, felt the thick wad of paper, and fastened the suit-case without making any further investigation. It was not until she opened the note-case in the train that she knew she had been robbed. It was then that she paid her dramatic call on the Meyers and found Alleyn in their sleeper.

“And you suspected Mr. Liversidge when you began to tell us about paying your debt to him?”

She said yes. The thought of Liversidge’s possible complicity occurred to her at that moment. The next morning Meyer had taken her aside and questioned her closely about the money.

“He seemed to suspect Frankie—I don’t know why—but he seemed to suspect him.”

It was then that Meyer had insisted on paying her the amount that had been stolen. He had not made any definite accusation against Liversidge but had warned her against forming any attachment that she might afterwards regret.

“Did Miss Dacres speak to you about Mr. Liversidge?”

But it appeared Carolyn had said nothing definite, though Miss Gaynes had received an impression that Carolyn, too, had something up her sleeve.

“And have you yourself said anything about this matter to Mr. Liversidge?”

Here a renewed display of emotion threatened to appear. Alleyn steered her off it and got her back to the conversation that took place off-stage. She said that, guessing at Meyer’s view of the theft, “all sorts of dreadful thoughts” came into her mind when he was killed.

“Then you thought, at the outset, that it was a case of murder?”