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Later still on this misty morning Fay Perigal, having changed into uniform in the nurses' room at Otterly Hospital, looked up with a start, for she had been in a reverie, as the door opened and the matron came in.

"Good morning, dear," said Mrs. Maddison. "I expect you are rather tired."

It was unusual for matron to address any of the nurses in her charge as "dear," but Fay Perigal, perhaps because she was pretty, or because she was highly efficient, or because (for these accidents are said to count) she was related to the Marquis of Ord, had been a great favorite of Mrs. Maddison's from the first.

She was "Nurse Perigal" in public, but "Fay," or "dear" in private.

"Yes, I am rather tired, matron. In many ways I had a dreadful time."

"Was it such a wild party?"

Mrs. Maddison, her beautiful graying hair never disarranged, her poise unchangeably serene, permitted a worldly twinkle to animate her eyes which few had seen there.

Fay shook her head. "No, it was gay enough, as wartime parties go. Julie and I were at school together: I should have hated not to be there. But first of all, owing to some mistake, and I am not blaming anybody, I found myself alone in London with nowhere to sleep! And then—" she repressed a shudder—"I found myself mixed up in a murder."