her existence then—you'll see what beetling eyebrows she has by nature. The two women were otherwise about the same size and general build. With the wig, and the eyebrow shaved to a peak in the middle, and after years of semi-invalidism, the one could easily pass herself off for the other, when there were no suspicions alert. I found in my hunt at the villa an old pill-box which gave me a Biarritz address, and went there. The rest of the story . . . ? Well, after that it was——” “Merely a matter of routine,” suggested Carter; “but say, Chief Inspector, I'll never forget what I owe you. You saved me once when you drew Beale's fangs, and you've saved Christine to-night.” “I don't mind telling you that I never in all my life spent a worse five minutes than when I had to decide what had become of her, and knew that if I made a mistake there would be no time to put it right.” Pointer spoke with feeling. “What made you guess the river?” Carter asked in a hushed voice. “Couldn't see what else they could do with her. It was obvious that the house had been cleared so that no one should know of her second arrival. When she had been at the villa before, she had practically no friends on this side of the Atlantic. I think they counted on that a bit. I know this coast pretty well. As Mr. Deane, I've walked it over for hours, and I couldn't call to mind any ravine or place where a body could be dropped as though from a motor accident except some spots a good way off, and where a very stiff gradient had to be climbed. The tyres and the small amount of petrol were against them. There only remained the sea, for the villa itself was out of the question. What they wanted was an accident, not a body that could be found some time or other, and prove it to've been a murder.” “You jumped to the conclusion at once that her life was in danger, then?” Pointer put his head on one side. “Well . . . in a murder case there generally comes a moment when a second murder seems the only way to keep the first one quiet.” The two men stopped at the Negresco, and Pointer glanced up at the purple roofs high above them. “Don't let yourself feel too grateful, Mr. Carter. You and Miss Leslie, as was, quite tangled me up for a while. There were weeks when I felt none too sure of either of you.” “See here,” Carter stopped him as he would have turned away, “I saw that man of yours—Watts—pull out a knife to-night to sharpen a pencil. My knife! I had lent it to a funny old gheezer here, a Colonel Winter, who's pestered me the last fortnight, buzzing around me, and I've been kind of figuring——”