"Well!" said Mrs. Presk, taking time to answer this question, "you can only judge a person's past by a person's present, and Miss Ligram knew too many shady people for my taste."
"Shady people!" echoed Gebb, pricking up his ears at this hint of a clue; "what sort of people?"
"Fortune-tellers, conjurors, spiritualists, and such-like, sir."
"Ah!" Gebb recalled the spread-out pack of cards, "so she was rather superstitious."
"Superstitious!" cried Mrs. Presk, casting up her eyes. "She was a very pagan for omens, and talismans, and consultation of cards. There wasn't a fortune-teller in London she hadn't down here at one time or another to read her hand, or question the stars, or look into the crystal ball, or spread out the cards. She was a perfect gold mine to those swindlers, believing all their lies, like the poor benighted heathen she was."
"What did she particularly seek to know?"
"The future!" was the landlady's curt reply.
"No doubt," returned Gebb, dryly; "and her own future at that. But was there any particular aim in her questioning?"
"Yes!" said Mrs. Presk, with a burst of confidence, "there was. I found it out from one of her fortune-telling visitors. She wanted to know if she would die by violence."
"So!" said Gebb, drawling out the word reflectively in the German fashion. "And was a violent death predicted?"