And then just the other day I thought I’d take one. Well, you know how one does, I tipped the bottle up on to my palm and quite a lot of tablets came out. I was just looking at them and not thinking anything, when all at once it seemed to me there was one that was different from the others. If it had come out by itself, I don’t know that I should have taken any notice – sometimes I wake up in the night and think about that – but seeing it there among the others, it seemed to me it was bigger than it ought to be, and that someone had been messing it up. I took a magnifying-glass and I looked at it, and you could see where it had been cut open and stuck together again. It gave me the cold shivers and I couldn’t throw it out of the window quick enough.’

Miss Silver gave a short hortatory cough.

‘If you will allow me to say so, that was extremely foolish.’

Mrs Smith said heartily,

‘Of course it was, but I didn’t stop to think, any more than if I’d got a wasp on my hand and was shaking it off.’

‘This happened recently?’

‘Monday night.’

Miss Silver put down her knitting, went over to the writing-table, and came back with an exercise-book in a shiny blue cover. Propping it on her knee, she wrote in it in pencil, heading the page with the name of Smith followed by a query. This done, she looked up with the bright expectancy of a bird on the alert for a suitable worm.

‘Before we go any farther I should like to have the names and some description of the other members of your household. Their real names, if you please.’

Mrs Smith was observed to hesitate. Then she said with a shade of defiance in her voice,

‘And what makes you say that?’

Miss Silver gave her the smile which had won the confidence of so many clients and said,

‘I find some difficulty in believing that your own name is really Smith.’

‘And why?’

Miss Silver’s pencil remained poised.