"Don't you think your mistress a rather curious person?" I asked, slipping half-a-sovereign into her hand. She regarded the coin, and then looked at me with a smile of surprise and satisfaction.
"I—I hardly know what you mean, sir," she faltered.
"Well, I'll be quite frank with you," I said. "I'm anxious to know something about what company she keeps here. Last night, for instance, a gentleman called in a taxi. Did you see him?"
"No, sir," she answered. "Mistress sent me out on an errand to the other side of the town, and when I came back just before half-past eleven I found the front door ajar, and everybody gone. And nobody's been back here since."
After disposing of my body, then, the precious trio had fled.
I knew that Phrida must now be in hourly peril of arrest—for that woman would, now that she believed me dead, lose not an instant in making a damning statement to the police regarding what had occurred on that night in Harrington Gardens.
CHAPTER XXI.
RECORDS A STRANGE STATEMENT.
"Will you permit me to come inside a moment?" I asked the girl. "I want you to tell me one or two things, if you will."