om, if you please, ladies--from left to right. No, a
little quicker. Now, Wills, see if you can recognise any of them by
their walk."

Three times they made the circuit of the room, while the butler darted
nervous glances from one to the other.

"It's no good, sir," he confessed at last. "I don't know any of 'em."

To Foyle the result was not unexpected. He had adopted the expedient as
a forlorn chance of linking up the Princess with the crime. Now it had
failed, he intended to try other measures. He dismissed Wills and the
women with a nod of caution not to speak of the formality they had
witnessed, and at a nod from him a uniformed inspector stood up by the
high desk pen in hand.

"Do you charge this woman, Mr. Foyle?" he asked.

Taylor had ranged up against her, and almost unconsciously she found
herself standing by the desk facing the officer.

She searched the superintendent's inflexible face to see if it gave any
sign of relenting. Foyle was calm, inscrutable, business-like. That was
what had struck her from the moment she entered the police station--the
cool, business-like fashion in which these men had dealt with the
situation. There were no histrionics. They might have been clerks
engaged in some monotonous work for all the emotion they evinced. They
treated her as impersonally as though she was a bale of goods about
which there was some dispute.

She was not a person easily daunted, but the atmosphere chilled her.

She reflected quickly that her refusal to explain the possession of the
jewels was playing into Heldon Foyle's hands. He would guess that they
were Eileen Meredith's--in any case, she could not stop him from seeing
and questioning the girl. What advantage would it be to be placed under
lock and key? Before the superintendent could reply she had made up her
mind.

"One moment. I can explain how I got the jewels if I can see Mr. Foyle
alone."

The inspector looked hesitatingly at the superintendent, who was
stroking his chin with his hand. Foyle murmured an assent and led the
way back to the detention room. The woman swung round to him quickly
once they were alone.

"Those jewels were entrusted to me for a particular purpose by Lady
Eileen Meredith," she said peremptorily. "That is all you have any right
to know. You can easily ring her up and ask her. Do it at once and let
me go."

"Very well," he said imperturbably. "I shall keep you here until I have
done so."

But it was not to B