did. You are therefore prejudiced but not, as you may think, in his

favour. Your very horror of the possibility persuades you to treat it almost as a probability. But I, on the other hand, consider only evidence. I have no personal views in favour and certainly no prejudices against.”

“And what evidence have you?” he demanded.

“None,” I replied, “except what you and Miss Clevedon have provided and what his absence emphasises. If you and she had kept out of it and he had been at Cartordale, as he should have been, no suspicion ever would have attached to him. At this moment the only evidence against him is the belief you and Miss Clevedon harbour, that he—”

He paced from one side of the road to the other and then back again.

“I wish I dared tell you the whole story,” he said. “I believe you could help us.”

Without another word he resumed his walk and plodded steadily on without so much as a backward glance.

But I knew now that my surmises were accurate—that Sir William Clevedon’s continued and unexplained absence was breeding deadly and sinister fears in the bosoms of his friends, of his sister especially. That she was at the bottom of Thoyne’s mysterious activities seemed clear enough. It was for her sake, probably at her instigation, that he had tried so hard to envelop me in fog. And it seemed evident that she was in possession of knowledge which, so far, neither Pepster nor myself had penetrated. It would be my business to discover what that was. I had not, however, very long to wait.