May I step out of character to say that I'm frightfully sorry?"

"Thank you. What else can I tell you?"

"Nothing now. I hope very much that you can arrange for me to see your mother a moment before I go. I must, you understand. But we will give her another hour or so. In the meantime, I am meeting the other members of your travel party in a parlor below. I won't ask you to come--"

"Nonsense," cried the girl. "Of course I'll come."

"I'm glad you feel that way. We'll hunt the answer together, Miss Potter," Inspector Duff said.

"And we'll find it," she added.

"We've got to."

For the first time she glanced at the bed. "He was so--so kind to me," she said brokenly, and went quickly out.

Duff stood looking after her. "Rather a thoroughbred, isn't she?" he commented to Hayley. "Amazing how many American girls are. Well, let's see. What have we? A bit of chain and a key. Good as far as it goes."

Hayley looked rather sheepish. "Duff, I have been an ass," he said. "There was something else. The surgeon picked it up from the bed--it was lying beside the body. Just carelessly, thrown there, evidently."

"What?" Duff asked tersely.

"This." Hayley handed over a small, worn-looking bag of wash leather, fastened at the top with a slip cord. It was heavy with some mysterious contents. Duff stepped to a bureau, unloosed the cord, and poured the contents out on the bureau top. For a time he stared, a puzzled frown on his face.

"What--what should you say, Hayley?"

"Pebbles," Hayley remarked. "Little stones of various shapes and sizes. Some of them smooth--might have been picked up from a beach." He flattened out the pile with his hand. "Worthless little pebbles, and nothing else."

"A bit senseless, don't you think?" murmured Duff. He turned to one of his men. "I say--just count these, and put them in the bag." As the officer set about his task, Duff sat down in an old-fashioned chair, and looked slowly about the room. "The case has its points," he remarked.

"It has indeed," Hayley answered.

"A harmless old man, making a pleasure trip around the world with his daughter and granddaughter, is strangled in a London hotel. A very deaf, gentle old soul, noted for his kindnesses and his benefactions. He rouses from sleep, struggles, gets hold of part of his assailant's watch-chain.