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Rh one-thirty." He pressed the electric bell, saying, "The maid will show you the way out. Au revoir."

I opened the door expecting to see the maid, but as she did not appear I closed it after me, intending to find my own way out. It was all very curious, I thought. No further word as to references—nothing as to notice. He seemed to have, as it were, jumped at me.

I was on the point of letting myself out of the front door when a girl came into the hall—a girl, I say, but I cannot describe her adequately. She was beyond the limits of my poor powers, but sweet, delicate, wonderfully pretty, were the impressions on my mind at the moment. She appeared to be quite young, and dressed in white. Her great, dark eyes were open widely as she came, her finger suggestively raised, rapidly towards me.

"You are Mr. d'Escombe?" she said in a low, half-frightened whisper, and as she said it the perfume on the writing-paper was no secret, for I now smelt it a second time—a sweet, subtle scent.

"Have you seen my father?" she asked, as I nodded assent to her first question, too taken aback by her attitude and sudden appearance to speak.