“I regret to say that I have nothing whatever to tell them,” she declared.  “Will you kindly let them know that?”

The clerk shook his head.

“I am afraid you will find them quite persistent, madam,” he said.

“I cannot tell them things which I do not know myself,” she answered, frowning.

“Naturally,” the clerk admitted; “yet these gentlemen from Scotland Yard have special privileges, of course, and there remains the fact that you were engaged to lunch with Mr. Fynes here.”

“If it will help me to get rid of them,” she said, “I will speak to the representative of Scotland Yard.  I will have nothing whatever to say to the reporters.”

The clerk turned round and beckoned to the foremost figure in the little group.  Inspector Jacks, tall, lantern-jawed, dressed with the quiet precision of a well-to-do-man of affairs, and with no possible suggestion of his calling in his manner or attire, was by her side almost at once.

“Madam,” he said, “I understand that Mr. Hamilton Fynes was a friend of yours?”

“An acquaintance,” she corrected him.

“And your name?” he asked.

“I am Miss Morse,” she replied,—­“Miss Penelope Morse.”

“You were to have lunched here with Mr. Hamilton Fynes,” the detective continued.  “When, may I ask, did the invitation reach you?”

“Yesterday,” she told him, “by marconigram from Queenstown.”

“You can tell us a few things about the deceased, without doubt,” Mr. Jacks said,—­“his profession, for instance, or his social standing?  Perhaps you know the reason for his coming to Europe?”

The girl shook her head.

“Mr. Fynes and I were not intimately acquainted,” she answered.  “We met in Paris some years ago, and when he was last in London, during the autumn, I lunched with him twice.”

“You had no letter from him, then, previous to the marconigram?” the inspector asked.

“I have scarcely ever received a letter from him in my life,” she answered.  “He was as bad a correspondent as I am myself.”

“You know nothing, then, of the object of his present visit to England?”

“Nothing whatever,” she answered.

“When he was over here before,” the inspector asked, “do you know what his business was then?”

“Not in the least,” she replied.

“You can tell us his address in the States?” Inspector Jacks suggested.

She shook her head.

“I cannot,” she answered.  “As I told you just now, I have never had a letter from him in my life.  We exchanged a few notes, perhaps, when we were in Paris, about trivial matters, but nothing more than that.”

“He must at some time, in Paris, for instance, or when you lunched with him last year, have said something about his profession, or how he spent his time?”

“He never alluded to it in any way,” the girl answered.  “I have not the slightest idea how he passed his time.”