to my having an interview with Mr. Jeffrey? If he would, I stood
ready to promise that my curiosity should stop at this point and
that I would cease to make a nuisance of myself.

I think he suspected me by this time; but he made no remark, and in
a day or so I was summoned to carry a note to the house in K Street.

Mrs. Jeffrey's funeral had taken place the day before and the house
looked deserted. But my summons speedily brought a neat-looking,
but very nervous maid to the door, whose eyes took on an unmistakable
expression of resistance when I announced my errand and asked to see
Mr. Jeffrey. The expression would not have struck me as peculiar
if she had raised any objection to the interview I had solicited.
But she did not. Her fear and antipathy, consequently, sprang from
some other source than her interest in the man most threatened by
my visit. Was it-could it be, on her own account? Recalling what
I had heard whispered about the station concerning a maid of the
Jeffreys who always seemed on the point of saying something which
never really left her lips, I stopped her as she was about to slip
upstairs and quietly asked:

"Are you Loretta?"

The way she turned, the way she looked at me as she gave me a short
affirmative, and then quickly proceeded on her way, convinced me
that my colleagues were right as to her being a woman who had some
cause for dreading police interference. I instantly made up my mind
that here was a mine to be worked and that I knew just the demure
little soul best equipped to act the part of miner.