“The lady” had walked from the main doors towards the centre of the room. Half-a-dozen little groups of people had been laughing and talking, and the buffet, in an ante-room, was fairly full. The lady was wearing a black satin gown and over it a mink coat. There was nothing remarkable in that, but her pallor had arrested the attention of the people who saw her—her pallor, said Grice and The Record, and her feverishly bright eyes. A dozen or more men and women had watched her, and silence had fallen upon the hall when, in the middle of the floor, the lady had turned and looked about her in every direction—and then collapsed in a dead faint.

She had not come round for over an hour, by which time the police had been called, because no one present knew her.

“And is that the lot?” asked Rollison.

“It’s plenty, isn’t it?” said Grice.

“Yes and no. Isn’t it early for you to make an appeal through the Press?”

Grice laughed. “We didn’t. The Record said that we would welcome any information about her, which is true enough, but we would have waited for a day or two before publicizing it. I don’t know that any harm’s done. She says that she doesn’t remember her name or where she came from, no one I’ve seen or we’ve interviewed knows her.”

“Where is she now?”

“At the Lawley Nursing Home,” replied Grice. “Mrs. Barrington-Ley decided to adopt her and shrank from the idea of her being kept at a police-station or in hospital, so she has a room at the nursing home. She speaks in a whisper and looks like a ghost. Two doctors have examined her, and found nothing wrong except a bruise on the back of the head.”

“Let me have it all,” said Rollison, when Grice paused.