Then the conflagration which had occurred a few days later, and the
subsequent discovery among the _debris_ of a body, charred and stabbed;
the apparent ignorance of everybody as to whose body it was; the
statement made by the police that none knew the names of the sub-tenants
who had occupied that house when the fire had broken out, or what had
since become of them--the actual tenant was in America. Without a
doubt, I reflected as I knocked the ashes out of my pipe into the grate,
something "queer" was going on, and I had inadvertently got myself
mixed up in it.

The last "incident" to puzzle me had been that momentary glance of
mutual recognition exchanged between the woman I knew only as "Mrs.
Gastrell"--or "Jasmine Gastrell," as Osborne always spoke of her--and
Mrs. Stapleton, and their subsequent apparent entire lack of
recognition. That, certainly, had been most odd. What could have been
the cause of it? Why, knowing each other, did they all at once feign to
be strangers? And the extraordinarily calm way Mrs. Stapleton had,
looking me full in the eyes, assured me that she had never before even
seen the woman she had just smiled at. Lastly--though this was of less
consequence--how came Jack Osborne to be dancing attendance upon the
woman I knew as "Mrs. Gastrell," when he had assured me as we drove away
in the taxi from Maresfield Gardens that night that though he admired
her he mistrusted her?

I had filled my pipe again, and, as I puffed at it to set it going, one
more thought occurred to me. And this thought, I must say, perplexed me
as much as any.

Hugesson Gastrell was said to have spent the whole of his life, until