For the moment I felt surprise, but as the hidden lady was apparently standing outside the ground-floor flat--perhaps awaiting admittance--I felt it to be no concern of mine, and proceeding, opened the outer door and passed outside, closing it quietly after me. An unusually sweet perfume one can seldom forget. Even out in the keen night air that delightful odour seemed to cling to my memory--the latest creation of the Rue de la Paix, I supposed. Well, I duly returned home to Albemarle Street once again, utterly mystified. What did it all mean? Why had Digby adopted such a marvellous disguise? What did he mean by saying that he wished to stand my friend and safeguard me from impending evil? Yes, it was all a mystery--but surely not so great a mystery as that which was to follow. Ah! had I but suspected the astounding truth how very differently would I have acted! Filled with curiosity regarding Digby's strange forebodings, I alighted from a taxi in Harrington Gardens at a quarter to eleven that same morning, but on entering found the uniformed hall-porter in a great state of excitement and alarm. "Oh, sir!" he cried breathlessly, advancing towards me. "You're a friend of Sir Digby's sir. The police are upstairs. Something extraordinary has happened." "The police!" I gasped. "Why, what's happened?" "Well, sir. As his man left the day before yesterday, my wife went up to Sir Digby's flat as usual this morning about eight, and put him his early cup of tea outside his door. But when she went in again she found he had not taken it into his room. She believed him to be asleep, so not till ten o'clock did she go into the sitting-room to draw up the blinds, when, to her horror, she found a young lady, a perfect stranger, lying stretched on the floor there! She rushed down and told me, and I went up. I found that Sir Digby's bed hadn't been slept in, and that though the poor girl was unconscious, she was still breathing. So I at once called in the constable on point duty at the corner of Collingham Road, and he 'phoned to the police station." "But the girl--is she dead?" I inquired quickly. "I don't know, sir. You'd better go upstairs. There's an inspector, two plain-clothes men, and a doctor up there." He took me up in the lift, and a few moments later I stood beside Digby's bed, whereon the men had laid the inanimate form of a well-dressed girl whom I judged to be about twenty-two, whose dark hair, unbound, lay in disorder upon the pillow. The face, white as marble, was handsome and clean cut, but upon it, alas! was the ashen hue of death, the pale lips slightly parted as though in a half-sarcastic smile. The doctor was bending over her making his examination. I looked upon her for a moment, but it was a countenance which I had never seen before. Digby had many lady friends, but I had never seen her among them. She was a perfect stranger.