“Let me help you with a suggestion,” broke in Anthony. “Would it be correct to say that they commenced to come somewhere about the time that Alan Warburton’s visits began to get less frequent? Could you agree with that?” “Let me think” she answered. The three men watched her closely. “As far as I can remember the first time I saw this handwriting was about Eastertide last year. I think it was on the Maundy Thursday. Yes, it was about then when young Warburton stopped coming here. Let me think again. If I’ve given you the impression that his visits _gradually_ dropped off, I’m afraid I’ve confused you. They didn’t—now I can think more clearly. They stopped quite suddenly—I should say a month or so before I noticed these letters and things coming. I know!”—she concluded on a note of triumphant remembrance. “He hasn’t been here since the Hunt Ball at Westhampton—early last year.” Mr. Bathurst felt his blood course a little more fiercely through his veins. He remembered the trenchant query that he had put to himself upon the occasion of his first visit from the Crown Prince of Clorania. “What was it that had happened at the Hunt Ball at Westhampton in the February of the previous year?” Find the right answer to that, he argued to himself and he would go a long distance towards solving the entire mystery. Bannister’s thoughts were evidently following similar lines for the expression on his face showed that he thought “Pinkie’s” statement to be extremely important. “That was in the February,” she continued, “only a few weeks before Major Carruthers was killed in his motoring accident. I’m certain, now I come to think of it, that young Mr. Warburton hasn’t been here to see Miss Sheila since then.” She spiced her statement with unmistakable emphasis and certainty. “Did you notice this change in Miss Delaney that you speak of immediately after?” queried Anthony. “After when?” “After this Ball that you have mentioned?” She thought for a while before she answered. “Yes, I think I can say now that it _was_ after that, that she began to alter. Just a little. Perhaps some people wouldn’t have noticed it. But in small ways——” Anthony interrupted her. “So that it might be a perfectly reasonable inference for one to make—that Miss Delaney met somebody at the Ball whom she preferred to Mr. Alan Warburton? What would you say to that?” “Yes—it might,” she conceded with a quick movement of the hand. “Let’s ask her to have a look at the bedroom,” put in Bannister, “she may be able to help us there too.” Ross crossed the corridor and opened the bedroom door; Bannister piloted her to it and shewed her the indescribable scene of confusion in the room itself. “Any idea what they were looking for?” he demanded of her sharply. “Pinkie” slowly shook her head. “None whatever! All Miss Sheila’s valuables—except her own personal jewellery of course, were always kept at the bank.”