At length, however, daylight showed again as we commenced to descend the incline towards Newton Abbot, yet I saw that his hand—practised, no doubt, with a weapon by the manner he had whipped it forth—was still uplifted against me.

"Really, sir, you have no cause for alarm," I assured him, with a laugh. "I could not approach you openly, so I adopted the ruse of travelling with you in order to speak. You came to Totnes today in order to meet me, did you not?"

"No, I certainly did not," he said, the expression upon his countenance showing him to be much puzzled by my words.

"Then perhaps you came to meet Mr Melvill Arnold?" I suggested.

"And why do you wish to know that, pray?" he asked, in the refined voice of a gentleman, still regarding me with antagonism. His small, closely set eyes peered forth at me with a ferret-like expression, while about his clean-shaven mouth was a curious hardness as his hand still held the weapon pointed in my direction.

"Because you are wearing the signs—the scarlet tie, the carnation, and I see that you carry the ebony walking-stick," was my cool reply. I was trying to prevent myself from flinching before that grim, business-like weapon of his.

"And what if I am? What business is it of yours?" he asked resentfully, and in evident alarm.

"My business is with you if your name is Alfred Dawnay," I said. "Mr Melvill Arnold is, I regret to say, dead, and—"

"Dead!" he gasped, lowering his weapon and staring at me, the colour dying from his face. "Arnold dead! Is this the truth—are you quite certain?"

"The unfortunate gentleman died in my presence."

"Where? Abroad, I suppose?"

"No; in a small hotel off the Strand," was my reply.

The news I had imparted to him seemed to hold him amazed and stupefied.

"Poor Arnold! Dead!" he repeated blankly to himself, sitting with both hands upon his knees—for he had flung the pistol upon the cushion. "Ah!" he exclaimed suddenly, raising his eyes to mine.

"Forgive me for receiving you in this antagonistic manner, sir, but—you don't know what Mr Arnold's death means to me. It means everything to me—all that—" But 

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