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She answered quietly: "Ito re to live here?"

"Johnto leave hi time, and said at last: "Perhaps--because I want to be--free!"

And, as she spoke, I had a sudden vision of broad spaces, virgin tracts of forests, untrodden lands--and a realization of what freedom would mean to such a nature as Mary Cavendish I seemed to see her for a moment as she was, a proud wild creature, as untamed by civilization as some shy bird of the hills A little cry broke from her lips: "You don't know, you don't kno this hateful place has been prison torash"

"Oh, rash!" Her voiceI could have bitten out ue for: "You know that Dr Bauerstein has been arrested?"

An instant coldness passed like aout all expression

"John was so kind as to break that to "

"Well, what do you think?" I asked feebly

"Of what?"

"Of the arrest?"

"What should I think? Apparently he is a Gerardener had told John"

Her face and voice were absolutely cold and expressionless Did she care, or did she not?

She ered one of the flower vases

"These are quite dead I --thank you, Mr Hastings" And she walked quietly past me out of the ith a cool little nod of dismissal

No, surely she could not care for Bauerstein No woman could act her part with that icy unconcern

Poirot did not , and there was no sign of the Scotland Yard men

But, at lunch-time, there arrived a new piece of evidence-- or rather lack of evidence We had vainly tried to trace the fourth letter, which Mrs Inglethorp had written on the evening preceding her death Our efforts having been in vain, we had abandoned the ht turn up of itself one day And this is just what did happen, in the shape of a communication, which arrived by the second post frolethorp's cheque, and regretting they had been unable to trace a certain series of Russian folksongs So the last hope of solving the lethorp's correspondence on the fatal evening, had to be abandoned