"I can only say that this is the first mention I've heard of any young lady; I'd no idea that anyone came with him. I can't understand, Timmins, why you didn't speak of her before."
"Well, sir, I thought you knew."
"Don't I tell you I didn't know? What do you mean by persisting in thinking I knew? I understood you to say that when you brought the message he was alone."
"So he was, sir--except for the young lady."
"Except for the young lady! What the devil do you mean by 'except for the young lady'? He wasn't alone if she was there--was he?"
The inspector interposed.
"That's all right, Mr Elsey; you leave this to me--this is more in my line than yours." He tackled the waiter, whose expression, as they worried him, became more and more rabbitlike. "You say that Mr Emmett and this young lady dined together?"
"Yes, sir, they did--I waited on them."
"Did she strike you as being young? How old would you have set her down as?"
"Well, sir, not more than seventeen or eighteen, at the outside--though perhaps she might have been a little more or less--it's not easy to tell a young lady's age."