“I suppose so.”  Miss Strange hated murders and it was with difficulty she could be brought to discuss them.  But she was not going to be let off; not this time.

“You see,” he proceeded insistently, “it’s not only mortifying to the police but disappointing to the press, especially as few reporters believe in the No-thoroughfare business.  They say, and we cannot but agree with them, that no such struggle could take place and no such repeated goings to and fro through the house without some vestige being left by which to connect this crime with its daring perpetrator.”

Still she stared down at her hands—­those little hands so white and fluttering, so seemingly helpless under the weight of their many rings, and yet so slyly capable.

“She must have queer neighbours,” came at last, from Miss Strange’s reluctant lips.  “Didn’t they hear or see anything of all this?”

“She has no neighbours—­that is, after half-past five o’clock.  There’s a printing establishment on one side of her, a deserted mansion on the other side, and nothing but warehouses back and front.  There was no one to notice what took place in her small dwelling after the printing house was closed.  She was the most courageous or the most foolish of women to remain there as she did.  But nothing except death could budge her.  She was born in the room where she died; was married in the one where she worked; saw husband, father, mother, and five sisters carried out in turn to their graves through the door with the fanlight over the top—­ and these memories held her.”

“You are trying to interest me in the woman.  Don’t.”

“No, I’m not trying to interest you in her, only trying to explain her.  There was another reason for her remaining where she did so long after all residents had left the block.  She had a business.”

“Oh!”

“She embroidered monograms for fine ladies.”

“She did?  But you needn’t look at me like that.  She never embroidered any for me.”

“No?  She did first-class work.  I saw some of it.  Miss Strange, if I could get you into that house for ten minutes—­not to see her but to pick up the loose intangible thread which I am sure is floating around in it somewhere—­wouldn’t you go?”

Violet slowly rose—­a movement which he followed to the letter.

“Must I express in words the limit I have set for myself in our affair?” she asked.  “When, for reasons I have never thought myself called upon to explain, I consented to help you a little now and then with some matter where a woman’s tact and knowledge of the social world might tell without offence to herself or others, I never thought it would be necessary for me to state that temptation must stop with such cases, or that I should not be asked to touch the sordid or the bloody.  But it seems I was mistaken, and that I must stoop to be explicit.  The woman who was killed on Tuesday might have interested me greatly as an embroiderer, but as a victim, not at all.  What do you see in me, or miss in me, that you should drag me into an atmosphere of low-down crime?”