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claim responsibility. Or perhaps she really was a man-eater. He remembered with dismay that there were several tunnels between here and Brakemouth, that there were no stops, and one of the tunnels was exceedingly long. He also noticed that in that horrible hat she wore a long old-fashioned hatpin, and in detective stories of the twenties hatpins were not infrequently used as weapons of attack. However, he pulled himself together to sustain his side of the conversation.
    “Yes, I suppose so,” he agreed. “I remember your saying on that occasion that if you could be certain of not being convicted you m.ight commit a murder yourself.”
    “I dare say.” She was quite unmoved. “In fact, I am making this journey today in connection with a crime.”
    “You mean, you are considering committing—but no, that’s absurd.”
    “Has it never occurred to you that successful murders are often committed precisely for that reason, because people in general consider it would be absurd to suspect A or B of violence? However, I did not say I was proposing to commit a murder. But I am convinced that a crime has been committed and I am, I fancy, being
    asked down to prevent a second crime possibly of a similar nature. That is, of course, speculation.”
    “So you’re going down to do the police’s job for them?” said John with sudden brutal candor. “Why doesn’t your friend, whoever she is (it didn’t occur to him that it might be a man), go to the police direct?”
    Miss Pettigrew shut up like a clam. “Really, that is her affair. Personally, if I am asked to confer a small favor, it does not occur to me to suggest to my friend that the police are paid for this purpose. Besides, there are occasions when a private individual may be of more use than the authorities.”
    John found himself reflecting that if he were the criminal in question he’d walk from the police fast enough, but if it were Miss Pettigrew in pursuit you wouldn’t see him for dust.
    “Perhaps you have suspicions?” he hinted.
    “Hardly, since I am not yet on the scene. But I am a logical person. If I see a vase hurtle across a room, I look for the hand that flung it. If my house burns down and there has been no storm and I have no electricity on the premises, I look for some human agency at work. And if letters appear without a signature or even a stamp, I am not persuaded that they were delivered by some celestial or diabolical messenger. I am, on the contrary, convinced that they were written by someone in close contact with myself, and by a process of elimination and by using such wits as God has given me, I set about discovering the author.”
    John Sherren, reminding himself he was a published novelist and the speaker no more than an ex-governess who looked the part, pulled himself together.
    “Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, I perceive,” said he, politely. “Are you—if one may ask—making this journey in a professional capacity?”
    She replied, with perfect composure: “My friend considers that she is in some danger from the writer of these unsigned letters, and she has asked me to give her my company and my assistance.”
    “When you say danger, do you imply violence?”
    “That is what the writer of the letters appears to have done.”
    Some people have all the luck, thought John. He’d never even seen an anonymous letter himself. “And what reason … ?” he began delicately.
    “Brakemouth is like every other place on the map,” snapped Miss Pettigrew. “People there are just as acquisitive as anywhere else, and if your neighbor has something you cannot afford or do not inherit, then what I understand is known as a jealousy complex is set up, and when this complex is sufficiently developed we may expect trouble in tangible form.”
    It all sounded a bit highfalutin to her hearer. “So someone is jealous of your friend,” he simplified. “I remember meeting an ex-inspector of the Yard once. He told me that all crimes of