"The tale has a postscript; and, as they say is sometimes the case with a lady's, it seems to me to be the most pregnant part of it. When they got into the room, and found the dead man lying on his face upon the floor, they also found that the blind before the only window was drawn right up, and the window itself was open at its widest, which seems a trifle; but then trifles are often of such importance. The man who waited on George Emmett at dinner declared that the blind was down and the window shut before dinner began; and more, much more, Elsey, his wife, and the inspector, are all three convinced that the blind was down, and the window shut, when they left the dead man alone in the room. Had the window been open it would have attracted their attention; because the wind was on that side of the house, and, apart from the draught, they could not help noticing the curtains being blown about--as they were being blown about when they found it open then. But if the window had been closed then, it must have been opened since, in which case the question arises--by whom. And here comes what seems to me to be the queerest part of this really queer story. Doesn't it strike you as being a rather curious tale?" Again he paused, as if for her to answer, but still she held her peace--she still waited. It was like the game the cat plays with the mouse; he was coming nearer and nearer, presently he would pounce. The problem she had to consider--though it was still unshaped--was, could she elude him when he did? It seemed to her that his eyes observed her more and more keenly as he continued. "George Emmett had a lady with him when he arrived at 'The Bolton Arms Hotel'--an elderly lady; well advanced in years, stout and unwieldy; with grey hair and a false front; the sort of person one who knew the man would expect to find in his society." She winced at this description, she felt that he was speaking with malice prepense. "In spite of her grey hairs she seems to have been a mysterious sort of person. She dined with him; she was in the room with him when the waiter last saw him alive, but when, some little while after, he came in and found him dead, she had vanished: and she has remained vanished ever since. It hasn't been for want of looking for her. They looked for her, not only in her own bedroom, but in everybody else's bedroom also; it seems that they looked in every room in the house; in every nook and cranny of it to boot: nowhere was a trace or her to be seen. They were puzzled; but that open window with the blind drawn up set them thinking; when they found on a splinter of wood, at the top of the window, a small piece of material, which looked as if it had been torn out of a woman's dress, they thought still harder; and came to a conclusion which was hardly flattering to themselves. It had not occurred to them to look for her in the room itself; nor what an excellent hiding-place was a recess and a curtained window.