Will you go there in my company, with your coat-collar pulled up and your hat well down over your eyes, and ask for a seat in the snuggery and show them this bottle?
They won't know that it's empty.

The man is sharp and the woman intelligent.

They will see that you are a stranger, and admit you readily.

They are only shy of one man--the man who drank there on the night of your sister's murder." "You 're a--" he began, with a touch of his old violence; but realising, perhaps, that his fingers were in a trap, he modified his manner again, and continued more quietly.

"This is an odd request to make.