"Mrs Anson is out of town, sir," answered the man. "The house is let." "Furnished?" "Yes, sir." "Is your mistress at home?" I inquired. "I don't know, sir," answered the man, diplomatically. "Oh, of course!" I exclaimed, taking out a card. It was the first I found within my cigarette-case, and was intentionally not my own. "Will you take this to your mistress, and ask her if she will kindly spare me a few moments. I am a friend of Mrs Anson's." "I'll see if she's at home, sir," said the man, dubiously; and then, asking me into the entrance-hall, he left me standing while he went in search of his mistress. That hall was the same down which I had groped my way when blind. I saw the closed door of the drawing-room, and knew that within that room the young man whose name I knew not had been foully done to death. There was the very umbrella stand from which I had taken the walking-stick, and the door of the little-used library, which I had examined on that night when I had dined there at Mrs Anson's invitation--the last night of my existence as my real self. The man returned in a few moments and invited me into a room on the left--the morning-room, I supposed it to be--saying: "My mistress is at home, sir, and will see you." I had not remained there more than a couple of minutes before a youngish woman of perhaps thirty or so entered, with a rather distant bow. She was severely dressed in black; dark-haired, and not very prepossessing. Her lips were too thick to be beautiful, and her top row of teeth seemed too much in evidence. Her face was not exactly ugly, but she was by no means good-looking. "I have to apologise," I said, rising and bowing. "I understand that Mrs Anson has let her house, and I thought you would kindly give me her address. I wish to see her on a most pressing personal matter." She regarded me with some suspicion, I thought. "If you are a friend of Mrs Anson's, would it not be better if you wrote to her and addressed the letter here? Her letters are always forwarded," she answered. She was evidently a rather shrewd and superior person. "Well, to tell the truth," I said, "I have reasons for not writing." "Then I must regret, sir, that I am unable to furnish you with her address," she responded, somewhat stiffly. "I have been absent from London for six years," I exclaimed. "It is because of that long absence that I prefer not to write." "I fear that I cannot assist you," she replied briefly. There was a strange, determined look in her dark-grey eyes. She did not seem a person amenable to argument. "But it is regarding an urgent and purely private affair that I wish to see Mrs Anson," I said. "I have nothing whatever to do with the private affairs of Mrs Anson," she replied. "I merely rent this house from her, and, in justice to her, it is not likely that I give the address to every chance caller."