"One must be thorough in everything if one desires success." "And what is your address?" "I gave it to my own flat in Upper Brook Street—care of Ena Pollen—widow." "So you will come to London?" "Yes—I have to go there shopping before I return to Scotland," she replied grimly. "I am staying with Mrs. Pollen." "Good! It will be far the best for their London doctors to examine you. If you were examined up here they might resist the claim. If they did that—well, it would open up the whole business, and we certainly can’t afford to arouse the very least little bit of doubt." "Hardly," she laughed. "Well, I’ve played the game properly, my dear Bernie. My name is Morrison, and I am the widow of old Joe Morrison, the woman with the red hair, and I live at Carsphairn, Kirkcudbrightshire, the fine sporting estate left me by my late husband. All that is upon the records of the Universal Life Assurance Corporation." "Excellent! You’ve established an undeniable identity—red hair and everything!" he said, again gazing reflectively out across the rippling waters. "You have taken the first step." "The second move is that Mrs. Morrison goes to London on a shopping visit, prior to going abroad," the widow said. "Really, you are marvellous, Ena!" declared the humble insurance agent of Hammersmith. "Your foresight always carries you to success." "In a number of cases it has done so, I admit," the woman laughed. "When one’s identity is not exactly as one represents, one has to have one’s eyes skinned day and night. Men—even the shrewdest lawyers—are always easily gulled. Why? Because of the rapacious maws the legal profession have for fees. Women are always dangerous, for they are too frequently jealous of either good looks or pretty frocks. A man I can usually manage—a woman, seldom, unless she is in love. Then I side with her in her love affair and so gain her confidence." "Ena, I repeat I hold you in admiration as one of the cleverest women I have ever known. Nothing deters you—nothing perturbs you! You fix a plan, and you carry it through in your own way—always with profit to our little combination." "And very substantial profit, I venture to think, eh?" "I agree," he said, with a grim laugh. "All thanks to you, my dear Bernie," the red-haired woman said. "But really I am growing just a little apprehensive. Why—I don’t know, I cannot tell. But somehow I fear we may play the game once too often. And what then—eh?" "Funnily enough, I’ve experienced the same curiously apprehensive feeling of late," he said. "I always try, of course, to crush it out, just as I crush out any other little pricks of conscience which occur to me when I awake in the mornings." "Very strange that we should both of us entertain apprehensive feelings!" she remarked very thoughtfully. "I hope it’s no ill omen! Do you think it is?"