pleased to see
you again. I'm expecting him every minute."

Mr. Flexen was for a moment conscious of a slight sensation of vertigo.
The mysterious woman was the wife of Herbert Manley!

He could not at once see the bearings of this fact, but ideas, fancies
and suspicions raced one another through his head.

He checked them and said in a somewhat toneless voice: "I shall be
delighted to see him again. Have you been married long?"

"Rather more than a fortnight." said Helena. "But do sit down. My husband
will be so pleased to see you again. He has a great admiration for you."

Mr. Flexen sat down and unconsciously stared hard at her. Ideas were
jostling one another in his head.

"We won't wait for him. I'll have the tea made at once," she said,
bending forward to press the bell-button.

"One moment, please," he said in his crispest, most official voice. "I've
come to see you on a very important matter."

"Oh?" she said quickly, frowning. Then she looked at him with
steady eyes.

"Yes. You know that I am investigating the Loudwater case, and I have
received information that you are the mysterious lady who visited Lord
Loudwater on the night of his death and had a violent quarrel with him."

"We began by quarrelling," she said quietly.

"_Began_ by quarrelling?" said Mr. Flexen.

"Yes. I'd better tell you the whole story, and you'll understand," she
said in a matter-of-fact voice. "Rather more than two years ago I was
engaged to be married to Lord Loudwater. He broke off our engagement and
married Miss Quainton. I was not going to stand that, and I was going to
bring a breach of promise action against him. He didn't want that, of
course. It would most likely have stopped his marrying Miss Quainton. So
he agreed to make over the Crest, my house just beyond Loudwater, to me,
and pay me an allowance of six hundred a year."

"This was two years ago?" said Mr. Flexen.

"Yes," said Helena. "But stupidly, though I had the house properly made
over to me, I didn't have a deed about the allowance. And a few days
before he committed suicide--"

"Committed suicide?" Mr. Flexen interrupted.

"Of course he committed suicide. Didn't Dr. Thornhill say that the wound
might have been self-inflicted? Besides, poor Egbert had a most
frightful temper."

"But why should he commit suicide?" said Mr. Flexen.

"He may have been upset about Lady Loudwater and Colonel Grey. Why, I'm
quite sure that it would drive him mad--absolu