"Who is it?" asked McKnight under his breath.

"Ontario." I formed it with my lips rather than said it. McKnight's
eyebrows went up and he looked with increased interest at the
black-gowned figure.

I ate little after that. The situation was rather bad for me, I began to
see. Here was a woman who could, if she wished, and had any motive for
so doing, put me in jail under a capital charge. A word from her to the
police, and polite surveillance would become active interference.

Then, too, she could say that she had seen me, just after the wreck,
with a young woman from the murdered man's car, and thus probably bring
Alison West into the case.

It is not surprising, then, that I ate little. The woman across seemed
in no hurry to go. She loitered over a demi-tasse, and that finished,
sat with her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, looking darkly at
the changing groups in the room.

The fun at the table where the college boys sat began to grow a little
noisy; the fat man, now a purplish shade, ambled away behind his slim
companion; the newspaper woman pinned on her business-like hat and
stalked out. Still the woman at the next table waited.

It was a relief when the meal was over. We got our hats and were about
to leave the room, when a waiter touched me on the arm.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "but the lady at the table near the
window, the lady in black, sir, would like to speak to you."

I looked down between the rows of tables to where the woman sat alone,
her chin still resting on her hand, her black eyes still insolently
staring, this time at me.

"I'll have to go," I said to McKnight hurriedly. "She knows all about
that affair and she'd be a bad enemy."

"I don't like her lamps," McKnight observed, after a glance at her.
"Better jolly her a little. Good-by."

CHAPTER XX. THE NOTES AND A BARGAIN

I went back slowly to where the woman sat alone.

She smiled rather oddly as I drew near, and pointed to the chair Bronson
had vacated.

"Sit down, Mr. Blakeley," she said, "I am going to take a few minutes of
your valuable time."

"Certainly." I sat down opposite her and glanced at a cuckoo clock on
the wall. "I am sorry, but I have only a few minutes. If you--" She
laughed a little, not very pleasantly, and opening a small black fan
covered with spangles, waved it slowly.

"The fact is," she said, "I think we are about to make a bargain."

"A bargain?" I asked incredulously. "You hav