feel that I am entitled to some knowledge, because I and my family are just now in a most ambiguous position.” 

 I don’t know whether he understood me or not: he took of his glasses and wiped them. 

 “I shall be very happy,” he said with old-fashioned courtesy. 

 “Thank you. Mr. Harton, did Mr. Arnold Armstrong know that Sunnyside had been rented?” 

 “I think—yes, he did. In fact, I myself told him about it.” 

 “And he knew who the tenants were?” 

 “Yes.” 

 “He had not been living with the family for some years, I believe?” 

 “No. Unfortunately, there had been trouble between Arnold and his father. For two years he had lived in town.” 

 “Then it would be unlikely that he came here last night to get possession of anything belonging to him?” 

 “I should think it hardly possible,” he admitted. “To be perfectly frank, Miss Innes, I can not think of any reason whatever for his coming here as he did. He had been staying at the club-house across the valley for the last week, Jarvis tells me, but that only explains how he came here, not why. It is a most unfortunate family.” 

 He shook his head despondently, and I felt that this dried-up little man was the repository of much that he had not told me. I gave up trying to elicit any information from him, and we went together to view the body before it was taken to the city. It had been lifted on to the billiard-table and a sheet thrown over it; otherwise nothing had been touched. A soft hat lay beside it, and the collar of the dinner-coat was still turned up. The handsome, dissipated face of Arnold Armstrong, purged of its ugly lines, was now only pathetic. As we went in Mrs. Watson appeared at the card-room door. 

 “Come in, Mrs. Watson,” the lawyer said. But she shook her head and withdrew: she was the only one in the house who seemed to regret the dead man, and even she seemed rather shocked than sorry. 

 I went to the door at the foot of the circular staircase and opened it. If I could only have seen Halsey coming at his usual 

 Prev. P 25/167 next