"I was perhaps a little frightened and the note piqued my curiosity. The quickest way to learn what was wrong seemed to me to follow the writer's instructions. I went to Grosvenor Gardens, where I was apparently expected, for a man-servant let me in and took me to Mr. Grell's study. I walked in by myself, not permitting him to announce me. The room was in semi-darkness, but I could make out a figure on a couch at the other end of the room. I walked over to it. The face was in shadow, and not until I was quite close could I see the stain on the shirt front. It took me a few moments to realise that the man was dead.
"Then I wanted to scream, to call out for help, but I could not. It was all too terrible—horrible—like a ghastly dream. Gradually my wits and my senses returned to me. It came into my mind like a flash
that the letter I had received hinted at blackmail. I could not see the dead man's face."
Her voice died away and she looked a little hesitatingly at the superintendent. He nodded encouragingly.
"Don't be afraid, Lady Eileen. You had found a dead man in Mr. Grell's house—a man whom you suspected of blackmailing your fiancé. You not unnaturally thought that he had been killed by Mr. Grell."
"Yes." She was speaking in a lower key now. "I feared that Mr. Grell in an excess of passion had killed him. What was I to think?" She made a gesture of helplessness with her hands. "My brain was in a whirl, but I seemed to see things clearly enough. I dared not raise an alarm, for I recognised that my evidence as far as it went would be deadly agamst the man I loved. I laid my hand on the dagger to withdraw it, but at that moment I heard the door behind me open and close quickly. I turned, but not sharply enough to see who the intruder was.
"Then the idea came to me that I must get quietly out of the place. So far as I knew I was the only person who could guess that Mr. Grell had been blackmailed and so supply a motive for the crime. I slipped downstairs and went home. You will understand my state of mind. At about eleven o'clock I thought of a possible chance of speaking to Mr. Grell. I rang up his club. Sir Ralph Fairfield answered. He assured me that Mr. Grell had been there all the evening, but was too busy to speak to me. I was unspeakably relieved.
"Then in the morning, he, Sir Ralph Fairfield, came
to see me. I partly guessed his mission, but the full shock came when he told me that it was Mr. Grell who was murdered. I think I must have been mad at the time. I said nothing about my own discovery—if Mr. Grell had been blackmailed, I did not want any details to come out. Besides, it seemed obvious to me that Fairfield had said Grell was at the club in order to shield himself." She flushed slightly. "I knew Sir Ralph loved me. I thought he was guilty and—and denounced him.
"I continued to believe that until the Princess Petrovska came to me with a note from Mr. Grell bidding me trust her. I gave her my jewels, and she told me he could communicate with me by cipher. I returned to my first idea that he had killed Goldenburg—the Princess told me the murdered man's name—rather than submit to blackmail. I determined to do all I could to help him, for, murderer or not, I loved him—I loved him. You know how our attempt to communicate by cipher failed.