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where she is, and if you or the cook can give her any help, there’s a reward offered, and another note like this to come.’ Well, she puts it into my hand and stands there looking at me very pleasant. So what I thought was, it wasn’t anything to do with Miss Postlethwaite, and I said we’d be very pleased to help, and I’d talk it over with you, and would she leave her address, which she wrote it down on a piece of paper, and here it is.
    The five-pound note and the piece of paper lay side by side on the kitchen table. Mrs. Harrison stared at them and said,
    “Well, I never!”
    CHAPTER VI
    Mrs. Harrison and me, we talked it over,” said Agnes. “And what we thought was, we didn’t see that it had got anything to do with Miss Postlethwaite.” She sat on the edge of one of Miss Silver’s more upright chairs, her hands gripping a new shiny black handbag with a gilt clasp. Her gloves were new too and of a good quality, and her black cloth coat had cost a great deal more than Miss Silver would have dreamed of paying.
    As she paused, and apparently expected some comment, Miss Silver said,
    “Quite so.”
    Agnes opened the shiny black bag, took out a clean folded white handkerchief with an initial A lurking in a wreath of forget-me-nots, dabbed the tip of her nose with it, and having returned the handkerchief still folded to the bag, proceeded to emphasize her last remark.
    “We didn’t see that it had got anything to do with her.”
    Miss Silver finished a row and turned her knitting. About ten inches of the back of Ethel Burkett’s cardigan now showed upon the needles. If she had not interrupted her work upon it to knit a pair of baby’s bootees, it would have been still farther advanced. She understood perfectly that the five-pound note already received and the one which Agnes was now hopefully expecting would be shared between herself and Mrs. Harrison, and that Postlethwaite would have no part in it. She smiled in an encouraging manner, and Agnes proceeded.
    “Such being the case, we thought it would be best if I came to see you, Mrs. Harrison’s feet being a trouble to her.”
    “It was quite the best thing you could do.”
    “That’s what we thought. Not that there’s a great deal to say, but your friend being so kind—and a reward offered—we thought it would be best if I came along.”
    The encouraging smile was repeated.
    “That is very frank of you. And now what have you to tell me?”
    A little colour came into the long, sallow face.
    “Well, it was this way. There’s the telephone in the drawing-room, but except it’s for a special friend it’s kept switched through to the front hall so that I can do the talking—Mrs. Dugdale being troubled with her nerves.”
    “Yes?” said Miss Silver on an enquiring note.
    Agnes took out the handkerchief and dabbed again.
    “It was about a week before Miss Ball left. I was in the dining-room putting away my silver, when the telephone went. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘you can wait till I get these spoons out of my hand.’ I wasn’t a minute, but just as I got to the door, there was Miss Ball taking off the receiver, which is a thing she hadn’t any call to do. She didn’t see me, and I thought I’d find out what she was at. Regular spying, creeping ways she’d got, and I thought if I could catch her out it would give her a lesson. I wouldn’t have listened, not if it had been anyone else, but she’d no call to be answering the telephone in that way, so I did.”
    “Yes?”
    Agnes was warming to it. She had another dab with the handkerchief and went on.
    “Well, she said at once, ‘Yes, that’s right—it’s Miss Ball speaking… Yes, yes, of course—you can speak to Mrs. Dugdale. I’ll put you through to her. She isn’t at all pleased about my leaving, you know, but she can’t help handing on the reference from Mrs. Dartrey—I do know that.’ ”
    Miss Silver said thoughtfully,
    “I see—she was talking to her future