"How did you know that it was Miss Chent?"
"I would know her footstep amongst a hundred; and she admitted afterwards that she had gone down to the library at that hour. I wondered where she was going, but lay quiet, listening for her return. At length, some fifteen minutes or so after ten o'clock, I could bear the suspense no longer, and hobbled downstairs in my dressing-gown. I thought that she might have gone to the library to see her uncle, and that further trouble might be brewing. As I promised to stand by her, ankle or no ankle, it seemed right that I should learn what was going on."
"Very reasonable of you, Ned. Continue." Prelice was deeply interested.
"I opened the library door, and saw her seated in the armchair."
"Was there any sign of smoke?"
"No! But there was a peculiar smell in the room."
"What kind of a smell?"
Shepworth wrinkled his brows. "I can scarcely describe it," he said after some thought; "a sweetish, heavy, sickly scent—like a tuberose. That's as near as I can get. Mona told me afterwards that she also thought it resembled the thick perfume of a tuberose. It came from the smoke, of course—it must have come from the smoke."
"You believe in the smoke then?"
"Oh yes. Sir Oliver had evidently been trying some magical experiment."