"I did not say that; I am always where I have promised to be, Mr. Gryce." "Well, then?" he inquired sharply. I was purposely slow in answering him--I had all the longer time to search his face. But its calmness was impenetrable, and finally I declared: "The man you brought with you last night--you were the person who accompanied him, were you not--was _not_ the man I saw alight there four nights ago." He may have expected it; it may have been the very assertion he desired from me, but his manner showed displeasure, and the quick "How?" he uttered was sharp and peremptory. "I do not ask who it was," I went on, with a quiet wave of my hand that immediately restored him to himself, "for I know you will not tell me. But what I do hope to know is the name of the man who entered that same house at just ten minutes after nine. He was one of the funeral guests, and he arrived in a carriage that was immediately preceded by a coach from which four persons alighted, two ladies and two gentlemen." "I do not know the gentleman, ma'am," was the detective's half-surprised and half-amused retort. "I did not keep track of every guest that attended the funeral." "Then you didn't do your work as well as I did mine," was my rather dry reply. "For I noted every one who went in; and that gentleman, whoever he was, was more like the person I have been trying to identify than any one I have seen enter there during my four midnight vigils." Mr. Gryce smiled, uttered a short "_Indeed!_" and looked more than ever like a sphinx. I began quietly to hate him, under my calm exterior. "Was Howard at his wife's funeral?" I asked. "He was, ma'am." "And did he come in a carriage?" "He did, ma'am." "Alone?" "He thought he was alone; yes, ma'am." "Then may it not have been he?" "I can't say, ma'am." Mr. Gryce was so obviously out of his element under this cross-examination that I could not suppress a smile even while I experienced a very lively indignation at his reticence. He may have seen me smile and he may not, for his eyes, as I have intimated, were always busy with some object entirely removed from the person he addressed; but at all events he rose, leaving me no alternative but to do the same. "And so you didn't recognize the gentleman I brought to the neighboring house just before twelve o'clock," he quietly remarked, with a calm ignoring of my last question which was a trifle exasperating. "No." "Then, ma'am," he declared, with a quick change of manner, meant, I should judge, to put me in my proper place, "I do not think we can depend upon the accuracy of your memory;" and he made a motion as if to leave. As I did not know whether his apparent disappointment was real or not, I let him move to the door without a reply. But once there I stopped him.