The police inspector wondered if he had kept out of his voice, not only the surprise, but the dismay which he felt at this to him astounding disclosure.

“My fiancée is the niece of Dr. Maclean. She was on the telephone just now.”

“The young lady who, for a while, was your secretary?”

In spite of himself, there was a note of deep disappointment in the voice in which Mr. Kentworthy asked the question.

Harry Garlett instinctively straightened himself.

“Miss Bower became secretary to the Etna China Company—not my personal secretary—just before my wife’s death.”

There was an awkward silence between the two men.

“I see,” said Mr. Kentworthy at last. “I see, Mr. Garlett.”

But, as a matter of fact, he felt as if he had walked from the bright sunshine into an evil-smelling fog. Quite a number of pages in his thick little notebook bore the heading “Miss Jean Bower.”

“Is the date of your wedding fixed?”

“Well, yes, it is.” Harry Garlett hesitated, then exclaimed impulsively—“We are to be married to-morrow morning, by special license! No one, however, knows that fact excepting the vicar and his wife, and, of course, Dr. and Mrs. Maclean.”

Again there followed a strange, painful silence.

“I take it you will postpone your marriage till this matter is thoroughly cleared up?” said the police inspector at last.

As the younger man, dismayed, made no immediate answer, the other added: “I should do so, in your place, Mr. Garlett.”

Before he could speak the telephone bell rang and Harry Garlett took up the receiver and in a falsely cheerful tone—a 68tone with which, alas, James Kentworthy was painfully familiar as a result of his life work—he called out: “Is that you, Dr. Maclean? Garlett speaking. Would you be in if Mr. Kentworthy, a gentleman who wants to see you, on urgent private business, were to come along now? Yes? Right!”

68

He hung up the receiver. “Dr. Maclean will see you at once.”

Both men got up.

“One word before you 

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