A fainting woman, if she is beautiful and fashionably dressed, will
unnerve even a resourceful police official. Had she been one of the
servants Inspector Chippenfield would have rung the bell for a glass of
water to throw over her face, and meantime would have looked on calmly at
such evidence of the weakness of sex. But in this case he dashed out of
the room, ran downstairs, shouted for Hill, ordered him to find a glass,
snatched the glass from him, filled it with water, and dashed upstairs
again. His absence from the room totalled a little less than three
minutes, and when he held the glass to the lady's lips he was out of
breath with his exertions.

Mrs. Holymead took a sip of water, shuddered, took another sip, then
heaved a sigh, and opened to the full extent her large dark eyes on the
man bending over her, who felt amply repaid by such a glance. She
thanked him prettily for his great kindness and took her departure,
being conducted downstairs, and to her waiting motor-car at the gate, by
Inspector Chippenfield. That officer went back to the house with a
pleased smile on his features. But he would not have been so pleased
with himself if he had known that his brief absence from the room of the
tragedy for the purpose of obtaining a glass of water had been more than
sufficient to enable the lady to run to the open desk of the murdered
man, touch a spring which opened a secret receptacle at the back of it,
extract a small bundle of papers, close the spring, and return to her
chair to await in a fainting attitude the return of the chivalrous
police officer.

Mrs. Holymead's return to her home in Princes Gate was awaited with
feverish anxiety by one of the inmates. This was Mademoiselle Gabrielle
Chiron, a French girl of about twenty-eight, who was a distant connection
of Mrs. Holymead's by marriage. A cousin of Mrs. Holymead's had married