are not.

Also Easterton had come over and spoken to me, and of course pooh-poohed
the idea of my having sent the telegram, which had just been shown to
him. Dulcie stared at me with large, pathetic eyes, and I knew that, but
for Aunt Hannah's so-to-speak mounting guard, she would have asked me
endless questions instead of sitting there mute.

"You had better come with me and hear Jack Osborne's story," Easterton
said some moments later. "The Inspector tells me he is upstairs, and
still rather weak from the effect of the treatment he has received."

I had seen a puzzled look come into Aunt Hannah's eyes while Easterton
was speaking, but she remained sour and unbending.

Osborne was sitting up in a chair, partly undressed--he still wore his
evening clothes--cotton wool bound round his ankles and one wrist. He
smiled weakly as we entered, and the policeman who sat at his bedside
immediately rose. It was easy to see that Jack had suffered a good deal;
he looked, for him, quite pale, and there were dark marks beneath his
eyes. Nor was his appearance improved by several days' growth of
beard--he was usually clean-shaven.

His story was quickly told, and points in it gave food for thought, also
for conjecture.

It seemed that, while he was at supper with the woman I knew as "Mrs.
Gastrell," at Gastrell's reception, two men, unable to find a vacant
table, had asked if they might sit at his table, where there were two
vacant seats. Both were strangers to him, and apparently to "Mrs.