"It's hardly fair, Major Reith, for Miss Forster to put it like that. You will, of course, recollect the robbery of the ladies' jewels--actually from their bedrooms, when they were fast asleep. You remember how all the jewels were found again, in a leather bag? It was rather a funny story." She turned to the girl. "Miss Forster, shall I tell him all about it? I'm convinced that it would tickle him." A flush had come over Violet Forster's face, her cheeks were as scarlet as they had just been white. Not only her lips, her whole frame seemed trembling from head to foot. Miss Spurrier observed her with malicious amusement--she remained all smiles. "Why, Miss Forster, how red you have all at once become, and only a moment ago I was thinking how pale you were. Doesn't a touch of colour become her, Major Reith?" The major looked extremely uncomfortable, as if he did not know what to make of the position. Miss Forster relieved him of his perplexity. "I think," she said to him, "that I will hear what this person has to say. She can come with me in this cab to my rooms; and may I ask you to accompany us? I have reasons for wishing you to do so. Get in." She ordered Miss Spurrier to enter the cab very much as she might have done if she had still been Jane Simmons. Miss Spurrier laughingly complied. "What funny ways you have, Miss Forster! If you would let me tell Major Reith that story, he'd think they were funnier still." Miss Forster, following her into the cab, chose to sit with her back to the driver; the major, entering last, was placed in the seat of honour by Miss Spurrier's side. When the cab reached Cobden Mansions, and the passengers had alighted, Miss Forster said to the major, as she opened the door of a room which was just inside the hall: "This is meant to be used as a reception room for visitors to tenants of the flats who do not wish to see them in their own apartments. I am going to take this person with me upstairs; will you wait here till she has gone, or till I send for you?" The major expressed his perfect willingness to await the lady's pleasure; the two women ascended in the lift to Miss Forster's flat on one of the upper floors. So soon as they were in, Miss Forster's manner entirely changed. All signs of confusion or distress vanished; she assumed what was almost an air of truculence. Closing the door, she pointed to a seat. "Sit down." The visitor obeyed. "Now, Jane Simmons, or whatever you call yourself, you say you've been looking for me; I don't know what truth there may be in that, but I do know that I've been looking for you; and now that I've found you, we're not going to part until we've come to an understanding." "That's what I want, Miss Forster--an understanding." "In the first place, before you leave this room, you're going to tell me where Sydney Beaton is now." The visitor raised her grey-suede-covered hands with what was possibly meant to be a gesture of lady-like amazement.