"Did you see the old stick I was with?" she asked. "I don't know why I was fool enough to go out with him. Trying to pump me about poor old Barney, too, all the time. Just as though I couldn't see through him." "Old Barney!" Wrayson repeated, a little perplexed. She laughed coarsely. "Oh! come, that won't do!" she declared. "I'm almost sure you're on the same lay yourself. Didn't I see you at the inquest?--Morris Barnes' inquest, of course? You know whom I mean right enough." "I know whom you mean now," Wrayson admitted. "Yes! I was there. Queer affair, wasn't it?" The lady nodded. "I should like a liqueur," she remarked, with apparent irrelevance. "Benedictine!" They were seated in front of a small table, and were at times the object of expectant contemplation on the part of a magnificent individual in livery and knee-breeches. Wrayson summoned him and ordered two Benedictines. "Now I don't mind telling you," the lady continued, leaning over towards him confidentially, "that I'm dead off that old man who came prying round and took me out to dinner, to pump me about poor Barney! He didn't get much out of me. For one thing, I don't know much. But the little I do know I'd sooner tell you than him." "You're very kind," Wrayson murmured. "He used to come to these places a good deal, didn't he?" She nodded assent. "He was always either here or at the Empire. He wasn't a bad sort, Barney, although he was just like all the rest of them, close with his money when he was sober, and chucking it about when he'd had a drop too much. What did you want to know about him in particular?" "Well, for one thing," Wrayson answered, "where he got his money from." She shook her head. "He was always very close about that," she said. "The only story I ever heard him tell was that he'd made it mining in South Africa." "You have really heard him say that?" Wrayson asked. "Half a dozen times," she declared. "That proves, at any rate," he remarked thoughtfully, "that there was some mystery about his income, because I happen to know that he came back from South Africa a pauper." "Very likely," she remarked. "Barney was always the sort who would rather tell a lie than the truth." "Did he say anything to you that night about being in any kind of danger?" he asked. She shook her head. "No! I don't think so. I didn't take particular notice of what he said, because he was a bit squiffy. I believe he mentioned some thing about a business appointment that night, but I really didn't take much notice." "You didn't tell them anything about that at the inquest," Wrayson remarked. "I know I didn't," she admitted. "You see, I was so knocked over, and I really didn't remember anything clearly, that I thought it was best to say nothing at all. They'd only have been trying to ferret things out of me that I couldn't have told them." "I think that you were very wise," Wrayson said. "You don't happen to remember anything else that he said, I suppose?"