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 to get away, he had not noticed, though on being questioned, he thought that the lady had tried to disguise her voice. Exactly why this impression—if it really amounted to an impression—remained in his mind the young man could not be sure. He did not remember any marked peculiarity in the woman's voice, more than in her manner. Still, there must have been something—if he could only recall it. So far as he could say, the woman had never been in the place before. She had given the name of Mrs. Bayneson, and an address, Deodar Crescent, Westbourne Grove. But no such street as Deodar Crescent existed in Westbourne Grove or its neighbourhood, and up to the time of Gaylor's arrival at headquarters no one of the name of Bayneson (spelled as the client of the Brownell Street pawnbroker spelled it) had been discovered. Of course, however, it was not to be supposed that a person disposing of Lady Hereward's property would give her true name and address; the police had not expected to find her by means of such a simple clue as that. Gaylor had been sent for, to tell whether his latest discoveries in the neighbourhood of Riding St. Mary would tend to throw light upon the mystery of the pawned vanity box.

Suddenly a blinding flash seemed to illumine the detective's brain. But the twilight of bewilderment could not thus have been made bright without the finding of the brown silk hairpin, and the conversation