She tells her story: her name is Freda Clegg and she is an orphan. The previous week she received a visit from an Australian lawyer who told her she might come into a legacy from business transacted by her late father but that it was dependent upon her having some papers of his. She handed him all of the papers she has, having no idea what the matter could be about and then received a letter from him asking her to call on him at his house, "Whitefriars" in Friar’s Lane – the empty house, and it was there she was attacked and Wilbraham saved her. The Major’s theory is that there is something in her father’s papers that the man posing as a lawyer wants desperately. Freda remembers that she thought her room had been searched when she was out and that this attack was possibly to take such papers by force from Freda if she had them on her person, or to force her to tell where they are.