This she said, thinking of the manner in which it was probable the detective tramp would seek access to her presence.
"By the way, Nelly," pausing with one foot on the steps of the dining-room terrace. "You may wake Mrs. Aliston and tell her that if I wish her to join me in the little parlor I will send you to her," then sotto voce, as she entered the house and went carelessly toward the drawing-room: "If this visitor proves a bore I will turn him over to Aunt Honor; I can't have two days of constant boredom."
Coming forward from the lower entrance, Constance encountered the gaze of the strange man, whom, arriving at the front door, Nelly had not ventured to set down as a tramp, and whose clothes made her doubt the propriety of showing him the drawing-room. Being of Hibernian extraction, and not to be nonplussed, Nelly had adapted a happy medium, and seated the visitor in the largest hall chair, where he now awaited the approach of Constance.
"I think you wished to see me," said Constance, in the unaffected kindly tone usual to her when addressing strangers or inferiors, "I am Miss Wardour."
The stranger arose, making a stiff salute, and saying in a low, guarded tone:
"Yes, Miss Wardour, I have a message for you;" at the same moment he presented her a card, and glanced in a suggestive manner toward Nelly, who was traveling up the stairs in a very leisurely manner, en route for Mrs. Aliston's rooms.
Constance glanced at the card which bore the inscription,
"Jerry Belknap,
Private Detective."
"Come this way," she said, throwing open the drawing-room door and preceding him into that apartment.
Jerry Belknap, private detective, followed close behind her, and himself closed the door carefully. Constance crossed the room, drew back the curtains, and pushed open the shutters of the terrace windows, thus letting in a flood of light. Then turning, she seated herself upon a fauteuil, and, motioning the detective to a chair opposite, said: