“When I heard that man call out your name, I knew I had been hoaxed.”
“By whom?” asked Crewe, who was puzzled at this example of feminine reasoning.
“I shall go back and see,” she said. “I will ring up Inspector Murchison from there and find out if he sent a message to me to go up to the police station.”
Crewe was keenly interested in knowing if she had been hoaxed, and by whom. Therefore he offered to accompany her home, as it was not a nice night for a lady to be in the street unattended.
When they reached 41 Whitethorn Gardens, she opened the gate, and walked up to the house rapidly. At the porch she stopped, touched Crewe lightly on the arm, and pointed to the front door. In the dim light a patch of blackness showed; the door was open.
“Come with me,” she whispered, “and we will take him by surprise. Don’t strike a match; give me your hand.”
She walked noiselessly along the dark hall, and turning into a passage some distance down it led the way through an open doorway into a room—a small and stuffy storeroom, Crewe imagined it to be, as the air was suggestive of cheese and preserves.
“Go, Arnold, the police are here! Go at once!”
The words rang shrilly through the house. Crewe realized that he had been tricked by the woman and he sprang forward to the door. But the click of a lock told him he was too late. He struck a match and its light revealed to him Mrs. Penfield standing with her back against the door she had closed.
“There is a candle on the shelf behind you,” she said composedly.