Instead of going straight to the office that morning I waited in some ante-room or other while Monty took in his drawing. Somebody else waiting there, who may or may not have known me, observed that it was a fine morning, but I am not sure that I replied. I was in no mood for exchanging casual remarks about the weather.

For while I still marveled—and I need hardly say rejoiced—admiration and joy must wait for the present. It might be some little time before I saw Monty again (he had told me he was making business calls during a great part of the day and working until late into the night), and another point had struck me. This was his new confidence that it would presently be "all right" between himself and Audrey Cunningham. I had had a glimpse, if not yet the full revelation, of where Smith stood; but I did not yet clearly see how this affected Mrs. Cunningham. Yet in Monty's mind a connection obviously existed. He came out of the editor's den again, folding up the brown paper that had enwrapped his drawing and putting it carefully into his pocket.

"Brown paper's scarce," he said. "I've used this piece four times already. And I undo all the knots in my string too. Well, which way are you going?"

We left the office and, barely a hundred yards away, turned into the Temple. Presently he resumed our previous conversation by asking me what I thought of his guess; and I told him. I told him also my difficulty about what his own engagement had to do with this.

"Do with it?" he repeated as we began to pace backward and forward along King's Bench Walk. "It's a good deal to do with it—if that about Smith's right, of course. You see, you hardly know Dawdy. She thinks you don't like her very much——"

"Then I hope you'll take the first opportunity——" I began hurriedly, but he waved his hand.

"Oh, don't you worry about it. I don't suppose she means it. And whether she does or not it seems to me this is exactly where I come in."

"Then you see more than I do," I remarked.

"Don't you? I mean her taking sudden fancies of that kind. I'm not superstitious myself—silly I call it—but she's a mass of it. Theatrical people are, I've heard, and anyway she is. I think that beast Cunningham started her off. When she used to sit up at night waiting for him to come home she used to do all sorts of stupid things—sit there counting slowly, and if he didn't come before she counted a hundred he wouldn't come at all—counting the taxis that passed too—watching the clock—beastly. Filthy time she had. I hope I'm somewhere near that brute at the Resurrection."

Presently he swallowed his anger and continued.

"Well, about when Philip offered us that studio, that accident happened, and everything was at sixes and sevens. Philip began it, stopping all that time in the cellar and behaving like a lunatic when he did come up. What his game was—well, you can search me. So first Philip starts playing the goat, and then there was all that fuss about Mrs. Esdaile going away, and Philip staying on day after day, always saying he was going and everything was perfectly all right but never budging an inch, mind you. Well, it began to get on Dawdy's nerves. And I began to catch it too. She said I'd something up my sleeve as well, and of course I had, about that pistol. And then there was that time when we took her wardrobe down into the cellar."

"Yes, tell me about that."

"Absolutely nothing to tell. That's all Dawdy's fancy too. If there'd been anything funny he wouldn't have left the key in the door, would he?"

"He took it out afterwards."

"It was there for some days anyway. In fact, I took another box of Dawdy's down, but I came straight up again. You're all wrong about that cellar."

"Hubbard doesn't think so."

"What does he say?"

"He doesn't actually say anything; he doesn't know; but he wouldn't be surprised if it turned out Philip had some sort of a portable installation down there. But don't take this from me. I know nothing about these things."

"Wetherhead knows about them," Monty mused....

"Go on about Mrs. Cunningham."

"Well, as I tell you, it got on her nerves. She began to say she was fed up with men and silly things like that. Didn't want to get married at all; wanted to go and live with some girl. And then one day——"

But here he suddenly stopped, and for a reason I could easily guess. Undoubtedly at this point she had made independent investigations, which Monty either knew or suspected and didn't want to talk about. His hesitation over, he continued.

"Well, so it dragged on, until one evening I met her after rehearsal, and that was the finish. Absolutely done in she was; ten hours that day and nothing but a bun and a glass of milk. Of course, I saw she was all tuckered up, and I didn't want to take much notice of what she said—just gave her something to eat and tried to calm her down. But it was no good. When I called at Oakley Street the next morning she'd gone—gone to stop with this other girl; and in a week the Company was off."

In spite of Mollie's injunction I ventured to ask a question.

"Did she return the ring you gave her?"

"No, and that's one of the reasons why I think it might be all right yet. But the chief reason's this. She's got it into her head that it all started with that crash. Superstition, but there was no arguing with her. Well, suppose I'm right in what I told you, and Smith didn't really shoot that chap at all—didn't shoot him in the way we thought at first, I mean. It would be just like Dawdy to say that took the bad luck all off. She's always either up or down, poor darling. A rotten life she's had."

I nodded, remembering Mollie's words: "She would be just the woman to take a hint of that kind." Although Monty didn't know it, Audrey had lost her ring, would regard the loss as an omen, and the loss had probably taken place shortly before Monty had met her at the stage-door.

It did seem to follow, even as Monty said, that with the removal of the whole Case out of the regions of ordinary crime, there might be an end also of the nightmare shadows that had oppressed Audrey Cunningham's soul.