"It's a lady as come in a cart, sir," began Mrs. Faith excitedly, when Frampton, looking over her shoulder, interrupted.
"A trap, sir; a trap driven by another woman."
"O dear me," moaned the little creature, who had now been deposited in a capacious chair. "Where am I now?"
"With friends, dear, with friends," said Mrs. Giles, stroking her hands. "Sam get the whisky; it's in the cupboard near the fire. And all you people clear out. She'll never get well if you stop here upsetting her."
"I'll see to it," cried Mrs. Faith, and forthwith in a most masterful way bundled the crowd out-of-doors. They would not have gone so easily, had not the magnet of the shop containing the corpse drawn them; but go they did, and Mrs. Faith closed the door.
"Warshaw has arrived," she explained dramatically, "and is examining all the place. He'll be along here soon, sir, to take you in charge. This lady," she waved her large hands towards the little half-unconscious woman, "came along in a cart with another one driving----"
"Another woman," snorted Mrs. Faith contemptuously, "and only one horse the cart had; for cart it was, though Frampton called it a trap. But she came along, sir," she continued officiously, "and said as she saw your motor engine run into a field. It smashed a gate, it did, and----"
"Stop," cried the little lady, opening her eyes and half rising. "I'll tell the gentleman all about it. Miss Destiny; sir, Miss Destiny--my name," and she curtsied.
Here was a freakish thing. I had talked about Destiny as a _dea ex machina_, and the goddess personally had come to superintend the drama in which I was supposed--as I shrewdly suspected by this time--to take a leading part. However, as open confession is good for the soul, I may as well state, and at the eleventh hour, that this story was written when the mystery was solved and justice had been done--I threw it, as it were, into a fictional form. Thus, as I knew the odd name of the little lady when writing I played upon its oddity, and saw in her the incarnation of the goddess who maps out the future. You can take this explanation with or without the proverbial grain of salt, as you choose. Meanwhile, here we are on the threshold of a mystery, and a flesh and blood creature, with the significant name of Destiny appears on the scene.