There was a noise of muffled and confused footsteps, as though someone
had started in panic for the door, then stopped in terror.

Words followed, the strangest he could have imagined, words spoken in a
gentle and tremulous voice:

"In pity's name! who are you and what do you want?"

Thunderstruck, Lanyard switched on the lights.

At a distance of some six paces he saw, not Roddy, but a woman, and not
a woman merely, but the girl he had met in the restaurant.



V

ANTICLIMAX

The surprise was complete; none, indeed, was ever more so; but it's a
question which party thereto was the more affected.

Lanyard stared with the eyes of stupefaction. To his fancy, this thing
passed the compass of simple incredulity: it wasn't merely improbable,
it was preposterous; it was anticlimax exaggerated to the proportions
of the grotesque.

He had come prepared to surprise and bully rag the most astute police
detective of whom he had any knowledge; he found himself surprised and
discountenanced by _this_...!