All sorts of things have happened--past all belief. Tommy Tennant has been arrested for murder--for the murder of me! Those wise police! And Reginald Townsend is coming to dine.

But let us proceed in order. Each thing in its place, and one at a time.

To take two or three things to begin with. The muddle they have made about what happened at Three Bridges is, really, in its way, quite marvellous. And it all pans out so clean--or seems to--to those who are looking on. No one is talking of anything else, and some of them talk of it to me. It only wants Mr. Townsend to favour me with a few remarks, and Tommy to add a postscript, to make me begin to think that I must be dreaming.

They have found the porter who saw me into the train at Brighton, and he has declared that the corpse is me! What a sweet creature that porter man must be! And they have found the porter who saw Tommy get out of the empty, blood-stained carriage at Victoria. But how they have found Tommy himself I don't, as yet, altogether understand. I know they have not found me.

I have had another sight of Tommy since the one on that first night--or, rather, so early in the morning. And, again, the manner of it was curious.

I have been in rather a predicament since I realised that Tommy and I were neighbours. There has been a certain delicacy about the situation. I might tell tales of him--he is married! I have seen his wife--such a pretty woman; but, unless I am mistaken, she wears the breeches! But they would not do him a tithe of the injury his tales would do me. And we women are so handicapped. The justice of the world is so unjust. A man may steal the horse, while we may not look over the hedge. Primitive civilisations are, after all, in certain respects, the best; but then they lack the very things we want!

I'm a widow--bon fide. I could put down as much hard cash, dollar for dollar, as many women who are famed for riches. I want to begin again. I have ambitions. I want to ruffle it among the best of them. Why shouldn't I? I have the qualities. So I have taken this highly respectable house in this highly respectable street, and furnished it in a highly respectable manner. I wanted to look about me--to find out where I am. I did not want to start with a splash, or folks would want to know who I was. And there are people who could tell them. For instance, Tommy for one. I want some one to launch me; some one fully equipped with the necessary equipment to give me a good send-off.

Tommy, if he liked, could spoil me. On the thin ice of my perfect respectability, at this stage of the game, I stand or fall; and, if I do fall, I fall right in. If I had known that Tommy and I were neighbours, I should have behaved in a very different fashion when I discovered we were fellow-passengers. I should have shown a spirit of Christian forgiveness; and, in excusing the past, I should have buried the hatchet. Tommy is a good-hearted creature, in his way. I could have easily induced him to hold his tongue, or even to assist me with a helping hand.

Now that boat is burned!

My first impulse, when I discovered that we were neighbours, was to fly before he made the same discovery on his own account. Had he chosen, he might have made my position absolutely untenable. While this mood was on me, I did my little best to conceal the fact. When I went out, I took care not to pass his house, lest he should see me from the windows. And the funny part of it was that the first time I did pass his house, he saw me.

The papers were full of the Three Bridges tragedy. The hue-and-cry was hot against the man who had travelled in that blood-stained carriage. What amazed me was his continued silence. It showed not only abject cowardice, but drivelling idiocy to boot. Anything was better--for him!--than keeping still. It was the Friday night. I had some letters to post. I had a headache. I felt that I must have some fresh air, or a change of air if fresh air was not obtainable; so I took them myself to the pillar-box at the end of the road. Doing so involved passing Tommy's residence. But it was dark; there was more than the suspicion of fog--the risk seemed small.

I went on the opposite side of the street. The fog was so thick that, when I had despatched the letters, it seemed absurd to take precautions.

"I'll stroll back past Tommy's. Why should I be afraid of him?"

I strolled. The fog appeared to be thicker every moment. The houses in the street, externally, were as like as two peas. I really found it difficult to find out exactly whereabouts I was. I was thinking of Tommy, and of how eagerly he was being hunted, and of what a sensation I might make by sending his address to Scotland Yard--when there he was in front of me!

Right close in front of me!

He was standing at the bottom of a flight of steps--his own steps--hatless, his hands in his trousers' pockets, as if, like me, he had come out to get a change of air. Suddenly he became conscious of my presence. He turned my way, and stared. The encounter was more than I had bargained for. It made me feel a trifle awkward. But the effect which it had on him was most astounding. The look which came upon his face actually frightened me--it's a fact! I had not thought that a human countenance could have been capable of an expression of such awful horror. To look at him--and I had to look!--made me go all cold. As I advanced, he went--automatically, I am sure--backwards up the steps, never removing his eyes from off me, the awful something that was on his face intensifying every second. At the bottom of the steps I paused--I had to; something made me. I don't know what he thought; but, as he saw me standing there, he made a convulsive movement backwards, went into the house, and banged the door.

I am cool enough as a rule. It takes something to put me off my balance. But I was off my balance then. The whole thing was so unlooked for, and seemed so strange; it unnerved me. When Tommy had gone I found that I was trembling.

But the incident was not by any means concluded.

When I had gone a few steps further on, I all but cannoned into what seemed to be a crowd of men, who, of malice prepense, were blocking up the pavement. What with the fog and my state of fluster, I did not perceive what they were till I was right upon them.

They were policemen.

My nerves were in such a condition of tension that, when I realised that fact, it was all I could do to prevent myself from screaming.

"I beg your pardon," I mumbled. "I did not see you."

"It's all right, miss," said a voice. "Pass on."

I passed on. But I had not passed on another dozen yards when, it seemed to me, by a sort of inspiration, I guessed what might have brought them there. What might have brought them there? What had?

Be the consequences what they might, I felt that I must stay and see what was about to happen. Turning, I went back a little way; and, keeping as much in the shadow as I could, I stood and watched.

A man, who was dressed in ordinary private clothes, went on in front. The policemen divided in two sections. Two of them followed closely on this man's heels. The rest went out into the road.

Just as I expected, the man in plain clothes passed up Tommy's steps. He hammered with the knocker at Tommy's door. The door was opened. He went in. The two policemen went in with him.

I knew that, even while I was standing watching there, Tommy was being arrested for the murder of me!

The confusion of my ideas filled me with panic terror. He had seen me not a minute back. He had only to tell the policemen so. They would come and find me there. There would be an end to all my dreams.

I rushed home. For the first time in my life I could not sleep. Indeed, I scarcely tried to sleep. All night I lay in agony. A thousand thoughts came crowding on my brain. I lost my self-control. I was half stupefied with fear. I wished that there were a hundred miles between my house and Tommy's. More than once, even in the middle of the night, I nearly made a bolt of it. I was so oppressed by the consciousness that he had only to send these policemen five doors along the street, and there was I.

But I did not lose every fragment of common sense. I did not become an utter fool. When the morning came, I was still there to see it out.

Next day I never moved outside the door. I bought all the evening papers. They were selling them in the streets all day. Tommy filled them all. "Arrest of the Three Bridges Murderer!" "Examination before the Magistrates!" They were shouting the words in the streets all day. It seemed that they had taken him to East Grinstead, wherever that might be, early in the morning, and brought him before the magistrates directly they got him there. To me the whole business was amazing. Why had he not told them at once that he had seen me, and put the police on my track? I was close at hand. They could scarcely have failed to find me. So far as he was concerned, there would have been an end of the affair upon the spot.

But Tommy's ways always were beyond my finding out.

What the newspapers called his examination was of the most perfunctory kind. The police simply said that they had arrested him, and he was remanded for a week.

And on Thursday Mr. Townsend was coming to dine.