Chapter 3 - Page 2

at large, I've ventured to ask you for this interview; because
what I read in the newspapers about the state of your health--."

I interrupted him, astonished.

"What you read in the newspapers about the state of my health!" I
repeated, thunderstruck. "Why, surely they don't put the state of MY
health in the newspapers!"

For I didn't know then I was a Psychological Phenomenon.

The Inspector smiled blandly, and pulling out his pocket-book,
selected a cutting from a pile that apparently all referred to me.

"You're mistaken," he said, briefly. "The newspapers, on the
contrary, have treated your case at great length. See, here's the
latest report. That's clipped from last Wednesday's Telegraph."

I remembered then that a paragraph of just that size had been
carefully cut out of Wednesday's paper before I was allowed by Aunt
Emma to read it. Aunt Emma always glanced over the paper first,
indeed, and often cut out such offending paragraphs. But I never
attached much importance to their absence before, because I thought
it was merely a little fussy result of auntie's good old English
sense of maidenly modesty. I supposed she merely meant to spare my
blushes. I knew girls were often prevented on particular days from
reading the papers.

But now I seized the paragraph he handed me, and read it with deep
interest. It was the very first time I had seen my own name in a
printed newspaper. I didn't know then how often it had figured
there.

The paragraph was headed, "THE WOODBURY MURDER," and it ran
something like this, as well as I can remember it:

"There are still hopes that the miscreant who shot Mr. Vivian
Callingham at The Grange, at Woodbury, some four years since, may be
tracked down and punished at last for his cowardly crime. It will be
fresh in everyone's memory, as one of the most romantic episodes in
that extraordinary tragedy, that at the precise moment of her
father's death, Miss Callingham, who was present in the room during
the attack, and who alone might have been a witness capable of
recognising or describing the wretched assailant, lost her reason on
the spot, owing to the appalling shock to her nervous system, and
remained for some months in an imbecile condition. Gradually, as we
have informed our readers from time to time, Miss Callingham's
intellect has become stronger and stronger; and though she is still
totally unable to remember spontaneously any events that occurred
before her father's death, it is hoped it may be possible, by
describing vividly certain trains of previous incidents, to recall
them in some small degree to her imperfect memory. Dr. Thornton, of
Welbeck Street, who