On the stairs Mr. Upton paid her compliments that made her wince as much as the crude grip of his hand; but he was tact itself compared with his friend Mr. Thrush, who sought an interview in order to ply the poor girl there and then with far more searching questions than she had been required to answer upon oath. She could only look at Mr. Upton in a way that secured his peppery intervention in a moment. The two men had scarcely seen each other since the morning, and the ironmaster thought they had enough to say to each other without bothering Miss Platts just then; they accordingly adjourned to Glasshouse Street, and Phillida was to have gone on to the hotel; but she made them drop her at a shop near Sloane Square on the pretext of seeing about her mourning. Phillida had promised to drive straight back to Trafalgar Square and order tea for herself if Tony had not appeared; but she did not drive straight back. She had a curious desire to see the place where the murder had been committed. It had come upon her at the inquest, while listening to the constable who had found the body, her predecessor in the witness-box. She had failed to follow his evidence. He had described that portion of his beat which had brought him almost on the scene of the murder, almost at the moment of its commission. It included only the short section of Cheyne Walk between Oakley Street and Cheyne Row. The houses at this point are divided from the Embankment by the narrow garden which contains the Carlyle statue. He had turned up Cheyne Row, at the back of the statue, but before turning he had noticed a man on the seat facing the river on the far side of the garden. The man was sitting down, but he was said to have turned round and watched the policeman as he passed along Cheyne Walk. There might have been a second man lying on that seat, or crouching on the flags between the seat and the parapet, but he would have been invisible from the beat. Not another creature was in sight anywhere. Yet the policeman swore that he had not proceeded a dozen yards up Cheyne Row before the shot was fired. He had turned round actually in time to see the puff of smoke dispersing over the parapet. It was all he saw. He had found the deceased lying in a heap, nearer the seat than the parapet, but between the two. Not another soul did he see, or had he seen. And he had not neglected to look over the parapet into the river, and along the foreshore in both directions, without discovering sign or trace of human being.