"I did not say that; I am always where I have promised to be, Mr. Gryce."
"Well, then?" he inquired sharply.
I was purposely slow in answering him—I had all the longer time to search his face. But its calmness was impenetrable, and finally I declared:
"The man you brought with you last night—you were the person who accompanied him, were you not—was not the man I saw alight there four nights ago."
He may have expected it; it may have been the very assertion he desired from me, but his manner showed displeasure, and the quick "How?" he uttered was sharp and peremptory.
"I do not ask who it was," I went on, with a quiet wave of my hand that immediately restored him to himself, "for I know you will not tell me. But what I do hope to know is the name of the man who entered that same house at just ten minutes after nine. He was one of the funeral guests, and he arrived in a carriage that was immediately preceded by a coach from which four persons alighted, two ladies and two gentlemen."
"I do not know the gentleman, ma'am," was the detective's half-surprised and half-amused retort. "I did not keep track of every guest that attended the funeral."
"Then you didn't do your work as well as I did mine," was my rather dry reply. "For I noted every one who went in; and that gentleman, whoever he was, was more like the person I have been trying to identify than any one I have seen enter there during my four midnight vigils."
Mr. Gryce smiled, uttered a short "Indeed!" and looked more than ever like a sphinx. I began quietly to hate him, under my calm exterior.
"Was Howard at his wife's funeral?" I asked.