"She certainly didn't come to see me," I protested. "She came to see the stranger--she's a friend of the dead man's." He turned, knit his brows, and stared straight into my face. "A friend of Massari's! Who told you so?" "She did." Sammy smiled incredulously. He was a man who had passed through life having singularly escaped all the shadows that lie on it for most men; and he had far more than most what may be termed the faculty for happiness. "H'm. Depend upon it she came here more on your account than to visit the mysterious Italian." "But she saw Miss Gilbert and asked for Massari!" I exclaimed. "It was Miss Gilbert who called me and introduced me. I took her up to the dead man's room, and the sight of him was a terrible shock to her. She's not exactly his friend; more his enemy, I think." "How could she know Massari was here, pray?" "Ah! I don't know that. The Italian was probably followed here after his arrival at Charing Cross." "Did she explain why the fellow came here?" "Yes, she told me various things that have utterly stupefied me," I answered. "She hints that the Italian and the woman Ina Hardwick were in league to take my life." "Your life?" he cried. "What absurd romance has she been telling you? Why you didn't know Massari until yesterday!" "That's just it. But nevertheless there's some truth in what she alleges. Of that I'm quite convinced." "Why?" "For several reasons. One is because she is aware of one curious incident in my life, one of which even you, Sammy, are in ignorance. It is my secret, and I thought none knew it. Yet Massari was aware of it, and she also knows something about it, although, fortunately, not the whole of the details." Sammy twisted his small, fair moustache, and was puzzled. "She actually knows a secret of yours, eh? Then depend upon it she intends to profit by it. Be careful of her, that's all, Godfrey. She may have known Massari, for she's mixed up with a very queer lot. But it's quite evident that she came really to see you. Did she enlist your sympathies in any way; did she ask you to do anything for her--any service, I mean?" For a few moments I hesitated; then, in order to further convince him, I told him all that had occurred, and repeated her strange story of how the man we knew as Massari had refused to tell the truth and liberate her. "He probably had sufficient reason," declared Sammy, in a hard voice, quite unusual to him. "The truth, however, is quite plain. She has spread out her net for you, and you bid fair to fall an easy prey, old fellow." "But, my dear chap, I'm pretty wary. Remember I'm thirty-two and am past the adolescence of youth." "She's uncommonly good-looking. You've told me so yourself. Admiration is the first stage always," he sneered. "But tell me what you know of her," I urged. "Where did you first come across her?"