good-humoured, cheerful-looking Scot, very much on the alert, and, if the truth be told, though it was a truth mercifully concealed from Garlett, a man sufficiently interested in human nature to feel a considerable thrill at seeing face to face a human being he was strongly inclined to believe a successful murderer.

“I’m told you’ve specially asked to see me, Mr. Garlett. So I take it you’ve not seen our mutual friend, Dr. Maclean? He spent a couple of hours here yesterday, and I think I may go as far as to assure you that unless some new and unexpected 90development should take place, the matter concerning which Mr. Kentworthy came down to Terriford will go no further.”

90

“Does that mean,” asked Harry Garlett quietly, “that I may rest assured that no order for the exhumation of my late wife will ever be issued?”

The Scotsman looked at him keenly. “We could not give such an assurance to any living man, Mr. Garlett. Not even,” he smiled grimly, “to the Lord Chancellor or the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

Then the speaker’s whole manner changed—it became grave, official. “Perhaps,” he went on, “I had better send for my colleague, and, may I add, my superior, Mr. Braithwaite? He will tell you exactly how the matter stands.”

“That,” said Garlett firmly, “is what I have come here to discover—I mean exactly how the matter stands.”

Dr. Wilson left the room, and when at last, after what seemed a long delay to the waiting man, he did come back, he was accompanied by a younger official. Garlett, perhaps by now morbidly sensitive, noticed that the new man only bowed; he did not shake hands with him, as Dr. Wilson had done.

“I understand that you wish to know exactly how the matter stands with regard to the action we took on the receipt of certain anonymous letters concerning the death of Mrs. Emily Garlett?”

“What I wish to know,” said Garlett coldly, “is not how the matter stands, but how I stand.”

As neither of the men opposite him answered his question, he went on deliberately: “Though I believe I was successful in convincing of my innocence the police inspector you sent down to make inquiries, he made it clear to me that nothing short of an exhumation would set the matter absolutely at rest.”

“In saying such a thing,” said Mr. 

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