He threw off his dress clothes with the repulsion that every man feels for such garments after an all-night sitting. He was tired out, capable only of attending to the trivial and personal things that immediately concerned him; thanked God, with the fervour which the average man expresses for none but the trifling mercies of Providence, that no case compelled his attendance in court at ten o’clock; stretched himself, yawned, stumbled shiveringly into bed, where, drawing the bedclothes tightly around him, he sank at once into the heavy sleep of the weary man. A confused sound broke upon his slumbers. In a waking dream it seemed to him that Minna was battering with a hammer at some formless material object which his mind identified as marriage. He awoke to find the noise that of knocking at his door. In reality, he had slept some hours, but he was conscious of only a few minutes’ repose. He called out angrily to be left alone. The knocking continued. He called out again. Then a strange voice was heard “Can I see you for a minute, sir?”

Exasperated, he jumped out of bed and opened the door.

“What the devil is it?”

He recoiled in some astonishment at the sight of Israel Hart’s butler, Samuels. The man looked greasy, unkempt, agitated. Behind him flashed the retreating figure of Mrs. Parsons, the porter’s wife.

“Come in, if you want to speak to me,” said Hugh, for the cold draught was sweeping down the passage through the open flat-door. Samuels obeyed.

“An awful thing, sir. I think you had better come round at once. My master was murdered during the night.”

If he had suddenly received a blow from a life-preserver, Hugh could not have been, for the moment, more stunned and dazed.

“Murdered—your master—last night?”

He stared at the man. It was inconceivable. The incredible horror of it was that he had passed the night, keenly awake, in the house. Israel Hart murdered, a few yards away from him, without uttering a cry, giving out a sound in the death-struggle—it passed realisation.

“Yes, sir, in his study,” said the butler with tears in his eyes and with quivering lips. “The housemaid found him at a quarter to seven this morning.”

“How did it happen?”

“Someone hit him with something heavy—just over here.”

The man passed his hand upwards from his temple to his skull.

“It has been terrible work this morning,” he added, with a shiver.

The first shock over, Hugh recovered his balance.

“I will come with you at once. Tell me the details while I dress.”

And while he hurried into his clothes and afterwards ate a crust of bread and drank a cup of coffee, Samuels told his story. In brief, what had occurred was this. The housemaid, coming to lay the study fire, had discovered her master lying huddled together on the hearth-rug. As she approached with her candle, a glance had showed her a streak of blood in his grey hair. She had screamed, rushed up to Samuels and given the alarm. He had come down, seen the body, recognised that life was extinct, had sent out at once for a doctor and a policeman. Pending their arrival, he had caused Miss Hart to be roused by her maid, and had remained in the study to prevent any of the servants disturbing the arrangements of the room. Miss Hart had come downstairs, wild with terror, and had fainted away, so that she had to be carried up to bed again. The policeman had come in the course of a few minutes, followed soon afterwards by the doctor, who was a near neighbour. Then the Inspector had arrived, and later a Scotland Yard official, and they were at present engaged in investigations. There did not seem to be the slightest clue. It was an awful mystery.

“And Miss Hart—how was she when you left?” asked Hugh, as they went down the steps of the mansion.

“It seems she came to very soon, sir,” answered Samuels, “and then she would dress and come down, and now she’s bearing up wonderfully. It was she and the Inspector that agreed you were to be fetched, as you were the last person—except the other—that saw him alive.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “I remember him telling you to go to bed.”

“Oh, I saw him again after that, sir, when he went upstairs.”

“Then how could I be the last? Besides I thought he was found in the study—I don’t follow you.”

“He went upstairs to get something from his bedroom safe—and then went down again. I was seeing to the fire in his room—and he told me again to go to bed. I thought you were still there, sir.”

“What time was that?” Hugh asked, sharply.

“That was five minutes to twelve.”

“Oh, I left him at half-past eleven,” said Hugh.

They arrived at The Lindens. A knot of idlers were standing at the gates discussing the straws of information that floated among them. A policeman on duty marched slowly round the drive, his footprints indistinguishable from countless others that had broken up the thin and melting coat of snow. On the steps stood an Inspector in talk with a couple of pressmen, who were taking notes with red, cold fingers.

The Inspector touched his cap as Hugh came up.

“A shocking affair, sir. If you will go in I will see you in a moment.”

Hugh entered, went up to the fireplace in the hall and warmed his hands, wondering at the force of routine which had caused this fire to be lit on a morning of such upheaval. The slight sound of an opening door made him turn, and then he saw Minna’s pale and haggard face. She beckoned to him hurriedly and disappeared into the dining-room. He followed her, shutting the door behind him. The sight of the room brought a fresh shock of associations. Was there ever such a ghastly morrow to a feast?

Minna stood by the table, one hand behind her resting upon it, her eyes meeting his in dull defiance. She checked brusquely his first half-articulated exclamation of sympathy.

“Yes. I know all that you can tell me. We can’t waste time over it. Have you spoken to the Inspector?”

“Not yet.”

“Thank God I’ve seen you first. This does not interfere with our compact. You won’t say a word about seeing me last night?”

“Certainly not,” he replied, turning away from her with a feeling of repugnance. “As far as your father is concerned, I left this house at half-past eleven.” She closed her eyes with a sigh of relief.

“I was afraid you might betray me—not wilfully—but indiscreetly.”

“Has this been your dominant emotion all the time?” he said, harshly. “I am glad our ways lie separate.”

“I have my interests to protect,” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders, walked past her to the fireplace and leant his broad shoulders against the black marble mantelpiece. Her selfishness dumbfounded him. Her eyes bore no trace of tears, her attitude not a suggestion of grief. Ill and worn she looked; but from shock and strain and anxiety—not from sorrow. Had she no human feeling? And yet she was the same woman whose heart had throbbed with wild tumult against his; whose eyes had glowed with a burning passion in their slumberous depths; whose voice had melted into murmurings like the deep notes of the mating dove. Once he had compared her in his mind to a volcano. The aptness of the similitude occurred to him now. She had passed through her period of eruption. Now the molten fire of her nature was cold and unlovely lava.

She moved suddenly from the table with the dragging step of exhaustion, and flung herself into a chair and lay with her head bowed upon her arm.

“I know how you judge me,” she said, hoarsely. “You have always judged me, and that is one of the things that made me hate you. You think I ought to be in floods of tears. So I should have been, if it had not been for last night. But I must protect myself now or never. No one can do it for me. How was I to know that you would be discreet? I had ruin staring me in the face. I have strained every nerve to keep my wits till you came. You can’t tell the agony of the strain. How could you? And this awful horror overwhelming me. Oh, God—don’t you think I feel the horror of it?”

She did not raise her face, but remained with it buried on her arm in an attitude of profound prostration. Soon a shudder ran through her frame. She began to moan and sob. An impulse of pity brought him to her side.

“If I can be of any help to you, Minna, you only have to command me.”

But she did not heed him, only waved him away with her free hand.

“Go—leave me,” she said, scarce audibly.

“If you want me, send for me and I will come,” he said. He left her, went into the hall, where he found the Inspector. To the latter’s questions he gave what formal answers lay in his power. A news agency representative joined them soon afterwards. Gradually Hugh acquainted himself with all the meagre facts in the possession of the police. Mr. Hart had been killed outright by one blow of a blunt, heavy instrument. Death must have occurred during the small hours. The safe in the study was found open. The only article apparently missing from it was a black deed-box, which Mr. Hart’s confidential clerk, who had been summoned immediately, stated to have contained bonds. There were no other signs of robbery. A thorough inspection of the premises had discovered no traces of burglarious entry, the only possibility of which was by means of a window that had been left unsecured. Footprints there were none, owing to the slight fall of snow. For the present the police were entirely at a loss.

“Do you know if Mr. Hart had any enemies?” asked the Inspector.

“A man in his profession comes into intimate relations with many people whom he could not call his friends,” replied Hugh. “But I am not acquainted with any of his clients. As a private friend I always found him kind and generous.”

“Could you supply me with any details concerning his private life?” asked the pressman.

“I am scarcely in a position to do so,” replied Hugh, in a manner that precluded importunity.

He felt sick at heart, unhinged, and longed to be free from the sordid horror of the house. His own hidden yet intimate connection with the tragedy of the night oppressed him like an incubus. It was he who had started the poor old man upon a train of thought and emotion that had kept him from his bed, where the murderer, if safe-robbery had been his only aim, might not have sought him. It was he who was responsible for the unguarded window by which the murderer had entered. And, then, the fact that he had been beneath the same roof discussing with the daughter her inheritance, while the father was being done to death downstairs, loomed grotesquely hideous before his eyes. It was like a situation in some vulgar melodrama where simultaneous action is represented in two separate and adjacent interiors.

At last he escaped police officials and reporters and found himself in the Heath Road, glad to breathe the outer air again, grey and misty as it was, covering the heath like a pall. Outside the Merriams, he paused, seized with a sudden desire for the comfort of Irene’s voice and the sympathy of her clear eyes. Mere intimacy, too, required that he should inform her of the catastrophe. He entered with the latch-key which he possessed by virtue of his intimacy, and knocked at the door of the smoking-room, where Irene always worked in the mornings. As soon as he appeared on the threshold, she rose quickly from her writing-table.

“You have come to tell me—I know it. The whole of Sunnington knows it—a dreadful thing—that poor little girl!”

“I have just come from the house,” he said, gravely. “I had a short interview with her. It is a terrible shock, of course, but she is bearing it pretty well—better than I should have expected. You know I was dining there yesterday, so I was nearly the last person who saw him alive. For that reason they came to fetch me this morning.”

“Tell me what you know about it,” she said, drawing a chair towards him. He sat down and put her in possession of the facts, as far as they were known to the police. She listened intently, sitting by her writing-table, supporting her chin on her hand.

“And have they no clue at all?”

“None. The poor old fellow found murdered. A deed-box gone from the safe. A window left unsecured. Practically speaking, that is all they can go upon.”

“Do you know, Hugh,” said Irene, “I am convinced it was no common burglar. It was some desperate man who had borrowed money on some securities which he knew lay in that box, and he committed this crime to get them back. He was hiding in the house all the evening, possibly somewhere in the study—-and he opened that window to escape by the back lane.”

He smiled in spite of himself at her feminine certainty. “I wish they would put you in charge of the investigations, Renie,” he said.

“But don’t you think my theory is quite plausible?” she asked, accepting his remark with a humble knitting of her brows. He admitted that it was, observed that he had spoken not in satire but in admiration. The police were standing about there, not knowing where to turn next.

“Well, the first thing,” said Irene, “would be to list the securities in the deed-box—there must be a record of them somewhere—and then to investigate the actions last night of each of the clients to whom the securities belonged.”

“I never thought of that,” he exclaimed, sharply. “Yes, they’ll do that, undoubtedly.”

Irene went on to speak of Minna; of the girl’s friendless isolation; of the help that she herself might have offered, had Minna not so resolutely repelled her advances. She would be even willing now to risk a breach of good taste if she could befriend her. She asked his advice. Her great-heartedness drew him very near to her—so near that it required a moment’s struggle to stifle the craving to tell her all the miserable history of his marriage, and his own connection with the night’s tragedy. How could he advise her in the matter, knowing, as he did, Minna’s inveterate jealousy and dislike?

“I think she will have some of her own people with her,” he remarked, mendaciously. “She said something about it this morning.”

He rose to bid her good-bye. As she took his hand she scanned his face earnestly.

“You are looking so ill and worn,” she said, affectionately. “Much more so than when you came in. It has been all this discussion.”

“I’m afraid it is the want of my breakfast,” he said, forcing a laugh.

All Irene’s protective instincts were aroused.

“No breakfast—and you were going away without asking for anything to eat! Sit down at once and let me get something for you.”

She ran out of the room in her impulsive way, leaving him standing on the hearth-rug.

“Good God,” he said, throwing his hat and gloves onto the chair, “I never thought of it.” And he remained staring blankly at a picture in front of him until Irene returned.