"That's true. Tell me, Wilhelmina, when did you and Mr. Peters meet?" "Why, in--in Sir Mallaby Marlowe's office, the morning you came there and found me when I was--talking to Sam." Mr. Peters uttered a subdued gargling sound. He was finding this scene oppressive to a not very robust intellect. "He--Mr. Samuel--told me your name, Miss Milliken," he said dully. Billie stared at him. "Mr. Marlowe told you my name was Miss Milliken!" she repeated. "He told me that you were the sister of the Miss Milliken who acts as stenographer for the guv'--for Sir Mallaby, and sent me in to show you my revolver, because he said you were interested and wanted to see it." Billie uttered an exclamation. So did Mr. Bennett, who hated mysteries. "What revolver? Which revolver? What's all this about a revolver? Have you a revolver?" "Why, yes, Mr. Bennett. It is packed now in my trunk, but usually I carry it about with me everywhere in order to take a little practice at the Rupert Street range. I bought it when Sir Mallaby told me he was sending me to America, because I thought I ought to be prepared--because of the Underworld, you know." A cold gleam had come into Billie's eyes. Her face was pale and hard. If Sam Marlowe--at that moment carolling blithely in his bedroom at the Blue Boar in Windlehurst, washing his hands preparatory to descending to the coffee-room for a bit of cold lunch--could have seen her, the song would have frozen on his lips. Which, one might mention, as showing that there is always a bright side, would have been much appreciated by the travelling gentleman in the adjoining room, who had had a wild night with some other travelling gentlemen, and was then nursing a rather severe headache, separated from Sam's penetrating baritone, only by the thickness of a wooden wall. Billie knew all. And, terrible though the fact is as an indictment of the male sex, when a woman knows all, there is invariably trouble ahead for some man. There was trouble ahead for Sam Marlowe. Billie, now in possession of the facts, had examined them and come to the conclusion that Sam had played a practical joke on her, and she was a girl who strongly disapproved of practical humor at her expense. "That morning I met you at Sir Mallaby's office, Mr. Peters," she said in a frosty voice, "Mr. Marlowe had just finished telling me a long and convincing story to the effect that you were madly in love with a Miss Milliken, who had jilted you, and that this had driven you off your head, and that you spent your time going about with a pistol, trying to shoot every red-haired woman you saw, because you thought they were Miss Milliken. Naturally, when you came in and called me Miss Milliken, and brandished a revolver, I was very frightened. I thought it would be useless to tell you that I wasn't Miss Milliken, so I tried to persuade you that I was, and hadn't jilted you after all."