Yet the perfume still arose to my nostrils—the sweet, subtle scent which had condemned her.
I briefly related to Mrs. Shand my amazing adventures of the previous night, my eyes furtively upon Phrida's countenance the while. Strangely enough, she betrayed no guilty knowledge, but fell to discussing the mystery with ease and common-sense calm.
"What I can't really make out is how your friend could have had the audacity to pose as Sir Digby Kemsley, well knowing that the real person was alive," she remarked.
"The police have discovered that Sir Digby died in Peru last January," I said.
"While your friend was in London?"
"Certainly. My friend—I shall still call him Sir Digby, for I have known him by no other name—has not been abroad since last July, when he went on business to Moscow."
"How very extraordinary," remarked Mrs. Shand. "Your friend must surely have had some object in posing as the dead man."
"But he posed as a man who was still alive!" I exclaimed.
"Until, perhaps, he was found out," observed Phrida shrewdly. "Then he bolted."
I glanced at her quickly. Did those words betray any knowledge of the truth, I wondered.