1

People are very odd, unreliable, and irregular in their actions and reactions. You can't count on them as you can on chemicals. I suppose that merely means that one doesn't know them so well. They are far harder to know; there is a queer element of muddle about them that baffles one. You never know when greediness—the main element in most of us—will stop working, checked by something else, some finer, quite different motive force. And them checking that again, comes strong emotion, such as love or hate, overthrowing everything and making chaos. Of course, you may say these interacting forces are all elements that should be known and reckoned with beforehand, and it is quite true. That is just the trouble: one doesn't know enough.

Though I don't study human nature with the absorption of Laurence Juke (after all, it's his trade), I find it interesting, like other curious branches of study. And the more complex and unreliable it is, so much the more interesting. I'm much more interested, for instance, in Arthur Gideon, who is surprising and incalculable, than in Jane and Johnny Potter, who are pushed along almost entirely by one motive—greed. I'm even less interested in Jane and Johnny than in the rest of their family, who are the usual British mixture of humbug, sentimentality, commercialism, and genuine feeling. They represent Potterism, and Potterism is a wonderful thing. The twins are far too clear-headed to be Potterites in that sense. You really can, on almost any occasion, say how they will act. So they are rather dull, as a study, though amusing enough as companions.

But Arthur Gideon is full of twists and turns and surprises. He is one of those rare people who can really throw their whole selves into a cause—lose themselves for it and not care. (Jukie says that's Christian: I dare say it is: it is certainly seldom enough found in the world, and that seems to be an essential quality of all the so-called Christian virtues, as far as one can see.)

Anyhow, Arthur's passion for truth, his passion for the first-rate, and his distaste for untruth and for the second-rate, seemed to be the supreme motive forces in him, all the years I have known him, until just lately.

And then something else came in, apparently stronger than these forces.

Of course, I knew a long time ago—certainly since he left the army—that he was in love with Jane. I knew it long before he did. It was a queer feeling, for it went on, apparently, side by side with impatience and scorn of her. And it grew and grew. Jane's marriage made it worse. She worked for him, and they met constantly. And at last it got so that we all saw it.

And all the time he didn't like her, because she was second-rate and commercial, and he was first-rate and an artist—an artist in the sense that he loved things for what they were, not for what he could get out of them. Jane was always thinking, 'How can I use this? What can I get out of it?' She thought it about the war. So did Johnny. She has always thought it, about everything. It isn't in her not to. And Arthur knew it, but didn't care; anyhow he loved her all the same. It was as if his reason and judgment were bowled over by her charm and couldn't help him.

2

The evening after Oliver Hobart's death, Arthur came in to see me, about nine o'clock. He looked extraordinarily ill and strained, and was even more restless and jerky than usual. He looked as if he hadn't slept at all.

I was testing some calculations, and he sat on the sofa and smoked. When
I had finished, he said, 'Katherine, what's your view of this business?'

Of course, I knew he meant Oliver Hobart's death, and how it would affect Jane. One says exactly what one thinks, to Arthur. So I said, 'It's a good thing, ultimately, for Jane. They didn't suit. I'm clear it's a good thing in the end. Aren't you?'

He made a sharp movement, and pushed back his hair from his forehead.

'I? I'm clear of nothing.'

He added, after a moment, 'Is that the way she looks at it, do you suppose?'

'I do,' I said.

He half winced.

'Then why—why the devil did she marry the poor chap?'

There was an odd sort of appeal in his voice; appeal against the cruelty of fate, perhaps, or the perverseness of Jane.

I told him what I thought, as clearly as I could.

'She got carried away by the excitement of her life in Paris, and he was all mixed up with that. I think she felt she would, in a way, be carrying on the excitement and the life if she married him. And she was knocked over by his beauty. Then, when the haze and glamour had cleared away, and she was left face to face with him as a life companion, she found she couldn't do with him after all. He bored her and annoyed her more and more. I don't know how long she could have gone on with it; she never said anything, to me about it. But, now this has happened, what might have become a great difficulty is solved.'

'Solved,' he repeated, in a curious, dead voice, staring at the floor. 'I suppose it is.'

He was silent for quite five minutes, sitting quite still, with his black eyes absent and vacant, as if he were very tired. I knew he was trying to think out some problem, and I supposed I knew what it was. But I couldn't account then for his extreme unhappiness.

At last he said, 'Katherine. This is a mess. I can't tell you about it, but it is a mess. Jane and I are in a mess…. Oh, you've guessed, haven't you, about Jane and me? Juke guessed.'

'Yes. I guessed that before Jukie did. Before you did, as a matter of fact.'

'You did?' But he wasn't much interested. 'Then you see …'

'Not altogether, Arthur. I can't see it's a mess, exactly. A shock, of course …'

He looked at me for a moment, as if he were adjusting his point of view to mine.

'Well, no. You wouldn't see it, of course. But there's more to this than you know—much more. Anyhow, please take my word for it that it is a mess. A ghastly mess.'

I took his word for it. As there didn't seem to be any comment to make, I made none, but waited for him to go on. He went on.

'And what I wanted to ask you, Katherine, was, can you look after Jane a little? She'll need it; she needs it. She's got to get through it somehow…. And that family of hers always buzzing round…. If we could keep Lady Pinkerton off her …'

'You want me to mix a poison for Lady P?' I suggested.

Arthur must have been very far through, for he actually started.

'Oh, Heaven forbid…. One sudden death in the family is enough at a time,' he added feebly, trying to smile.

'Well,' I said, 'I'll do my best to see after Jane and to counteract the family…. I've not gone there or written, or anything yet, because I didn't want to butt in. But I will.'

'I wish she'd come back here and live with you,' he said.

To soothe him, I said I would ask her.

For nearly an hour longer he stayed, not talking much, but smoking hard, and from time to time jerking out a disconnected remark. I think he hardly knew what he was saying or doing that evening; he seemed dazed, and I noticed that his hands were shaking, as if he was feverish, or drunk, or something.

When at last he went, he held my hand and wrung it so that it hurt; this was unusual, too, because we never do shake hands, we meet much too often.

I thought it over and couldn't quite understand it all. It even occurred to me that it was a little Potterish of Arthur to make a conventional tragic situation out of what he couldn't really mind very much, and to make out that Jane was overwhelmed by what, I believed, didn't really overwhelm her. But that didn't do. Arthur was never Potterish. There must, therefore, be more to this than I understood.

Unless, of course, it was merely that Arthur was afraid of the effects of the shock and so on, on Jane's health, because she had a baby coming. But somehow that didn't really meet the situation. I remembered Arthur's voice when he said, 'There's more to it than you know…. It is a mess. A ghastly mess.'

And another rather queer thing I remembered was that, all through the evening, he hadn't once met my eyes. An odd thing in Arthur, for he has a habit of looking at the people he is talking to very straight and hard, as if to hold their minds to his by his eyes.

Well, I supposed that in about a year those two would marry, anyhow. And then they would talk, and talk, and talk…. And Arthur would look at Jane not only because he was talking to her, but because he liked to look at her…. They would be all right then, so why should I bother?

3

I went to see Jane, but found Lady Pinkerton in possession. I saw Jane for five minutes alone. She was much as I had expected, calm and rather silent. I asked her to come round to the flat any evening she could. She came next week, and after that got into the way of dropping in pretty often, both in the evenings, when I was at home, and during the day, when I was at the laboratory. She said, 'You see, old thing, mother has got it into her head that I need company. The only way I can get out of it is to say I shall be here…. Mother's rather much just now. She's got the Other Side on the brain, and is trying to put me in touch with it. She reads me books called Letters from the Other Side, and Hands Across the Grave, and so on. And she talks …'

Jane pushed back her hair from her forehead and leant her head on her hand.

'In what mother calls "my condition,"' she went on, 'I don't think I ought to be worried, do you? I wish baby would come at once, so that I shouldn't be in a condition any more…. I'm really awfully fond of baby, but I shall get to hate it if I'm reminded of it much more…. What a rotten system it is, K. Why haven't we evolved a better one, all these centuries?'

I couldn't imagine why, except for the general principle that as the mental equipment of the human race improves, its physical qualities apparently deteriorate.

'And where will that land us in the end?' Jane speculated. 'Shall we be a race of clever crocks, or shall we give up civilisation and education and be robust imbeciles?'

'Either,' I said, 'will be an improvement on the present rÉgime, of crocky imbeciles.'

We would talk like that, of things in general, in the old way. Jane, indeed, would have moods in which she would talk continuously, and I would suddenly think, watching her, 'You're trying to hide from something—to talk it down.'

4

And then one evening Arthur and she met at my flat. Jane had been having supper with me, and Arthur dropped in.

Jane said, 'Hallo, Arthur,' and Arthur said, 'Oh, hallo,' and I saw plainly that the last person either had wanted to meet was the other.

Arthur didn't stay at all. He said he had come to speak to me about a review he wanted me to do. It wasn't necessary that he should speak to me about it at all; he had already sent me the book, and I hadn't yet read it, and it was on a subject he knew nothing at all about, and there was nothing whatever to say. However, he succeeded in saying something, then went away.

Jane had hardly spoken to him or looked at him. She was reading an evening paper.

She put it down when he had gone.

'Does Arthur come in often?' she asked me casually, lighting another cigarette.

'No. Sometimes.'

After a minute or two, Jane said, 'Look here, K, I'll tell you something.
I'm not particularly keen on meeting Arthur for the present. Nor he me.'

'That's not exactly news, my dear.'

'No; it fairly stuck out just now, didn't it? Well, the fact is, we both want a little time to collect ourselves, to settle how we stand…. Sudden deaths are a bad jar, K. They break things up…. Arthur and I were more friends than Oliver liked, you know. He didn't like Arthur, and didn't like my going about with him…. Oh, well, you know all that as well as I do, of course…. And now he's dead…. It seems to spoil things a bit…. I hate meeting Arthur now.'

And then an extraordinary thing happened. Jane, whom I had never seen cry, broke down quite suddenly and cried. Of course it would have seemed quite natural in most people, but tears are as surprising in Jane as they would be in me. They aren't part of her equipment. However, she was out of health just now, of course, and had had a bad shock, and was emotionally overwrought; and, anyhow, she cried.

I mixed her some sal volatile, which, I understand, is done in these crises. She drank it, and stopped crying soon.

'Sorry to be such an ass,' she said, more in her normal tone. 'It's this
beastly baby, I suppose…. Well, look here, K, you see what I mean.
Arthur and I don't want to meet just now. If he's likely to come in much,
I must give up coming, that's all.'

'I'll tell him,' I said, 'that you're often here. If he doesn't want to meet you either, that ought to settle it.'

'Thanks, old thing, will you?'

Jane was the perfect egotist. If it ever occurred to her that possibly Arthur would like to see me sometimes, and I him, she would not think it mattered. She wanted to come to my flat, and she didn't want to meet Arthur; therefore Arthur mustn't come. Life's little difficulties are very simply arranged by the Potter twins.

5

Then, for nine days, we none of us thought or talked much about anything but the railway strike. The strike was rather like the war. The same old cries began again—carrying on, doing one's bit, seeing it through, fighting to a finish, enemy atrocities (only now they were called sabotage), starving them out, gallant volunteers, the indomitable Britisher, cheeriest always in disaster (what a hideous slander!), innocent women and children. I never understood about these, at least about the women. Why is it worse that women should suffer than men? As to innocence, they have no more of that than men. I'm not innocent, particularly, nor are the other women I know. But they are always classed with children, as sort of helpless imbeciles who must be kept from danger and discomfort. I got sick of it during the war. The people who didn't like the blockade talked about starving women and children, as if it was somehow worse that women should starve than men. Other people (quite other) talked of our brave soldiers who were fighting to defend the women and children of their country, or the dastardly air raids that killed women and children. Why not have said 'non-combatants,' which makes sense? There were plenty of male non-combatants, unfit or over age or indispensable, and it was quite as bad that they should be killed—worse, I suppose, when they were indispensable. Very few women or children are that.

So now the appeal to strikers which was published in the advertisement columns of the papers at the expense of 'a few patriotic citizens' said, 'Don't bring further hardship and suffering upon the innocent women and children…. Save the women and children from the terror of the strike.' Fools.

In another column was the N.U.R. advertisement, and that was worse. There was a picture of a railwayman looking like a consumptive in the last stages, and embracing one of his horrible children while his more horrible wife and mother supported the feeble heads of others, and under it was written, 'Is this man an anarchist? He wants a wage to keep his family,' and it was awful to think that he and his family would perhaps get the wage and be kept after all. The question about whether he was an anarchist was obviously unanswerable without further data, as there was nothing in the picture to show his political convictions; they might, from anything that appeared, have been liberal, tory, labour, socialist, anarchist, or coalition-unionist. And anyhow, supposing that he had been an anarchist, he would still, presumably, have wanted a wage to keep his family. Anarchists are people who disapprove of authority, not of wages. The member of the N.U.R. who composed that picture must have had a muddled mind. But so many people have, and so many people use words in an odd sense, that you can't find in the dictionary. Bolshevist, for instance. Lloyd George called the strikers Bolshevists, so did plenty of other people. None of them seem to have any very clear conception of the political convictions of the supporters of the Soviet government in Russia. To have that you would need to think and read a little, whereas to use the word as a vague term of abuse, you need only to feel, which many people find much easier. Some people use the word capitalist in the same way, as a term of abuse, meaning really only 'rich person.' If they stopped to think of the meaning of the word, they would remember that it means merely a person who uses what money he has productively, instead of hoarding it in a stocking.

But 'capitalist' and 'Bolshevist' were both flung about freely during the strike, by the different sides. Emotional unrest, I suppose. People get excited, and directly they get excited they get sentimental and confused. The daily press did, on both sides. I don't know which was worse. The Pinkerton press blossomed into silly chit-chat about noblemen working on under ground trains. As a matter of fact, most of the volunteer workers were clerks and tradesmen and working men, but these weren't so interesting to talk about, I suppose.

The Fact became more than ever precise and pedantic and clear-headed, and what people call dull. It didn't take sides: it simply gave, in more detail than any other paper, the issues, and the account of the negotiations, and had expert articles on the different currents of influence on both sides. It didn't distort or conceal the truth in either direction.

I met Lady Pinkerton one evening at Jane's. She would, of course, come up to town, though the amateur trains were too full without her. She said, 'Of course They hate us. They want a Class War.'

Jane said, 'Who are They, and who are Us?' and she said 'The working classes, of course. They've always hated us. They're Bolshevists at heart. They won't be satisfied till they've robbed us of all we have. They hate us. That is why they are striking. We must crush them this time, or it will be the beginning of the end.'

I said, 'Oh. I thought they were striking because they wanted the principle of standardisation of rates of wages for men in the same grade to be applied to other grades than drivers and firemen.'

Lady Pinkerton was bored. I imagine she understands about hate and love and envy and greed and determination, and other emotions, but not much about rates of wages. So she likes to talk about one but not about the other. All, for instance, that she knows about Bolshevism is its sentimental side—how it is against the rich, and wants to nationalise women and murder the upper classes. She doesn't know about any of the aspects of the Bolshevist constitution beyond those which she can take in through her emotions. She would find the others dull, as she finds technical wage questions. That's partly why she hates the Fact. If she happened to be on the other side, she would talk the same tosh, only use 'capitalist' for 'Bolshevist.'

She said, 'Anyhow, whatever the issue, the blood of the country is up. We must fight the thing through. It is splendid the way the upper classes are stepping into the breach on the railways. I honour them. I only hope they won't all be murdered by these despicable brutes.'

That was the way she talked. Plenty of people did, on both sides. Especially, I am afraid, innocent women. I suppose they were too innocent to talk about facts.

After all, the country didn't have to fight the thing through for very long, and there were no murders, for the strike ended on October the 5th.

6

That same week, Jukie came in to see me. Jukie doesn't often come, because his evenings are apt to be full. A parson's work seems to be like a woman's, never done. From 8 to 11 p.m. seems to be one of the great times for doing it. Probably Jukie had to cut some of it the evening he came round to Gough Square.

I always like to see Jukie. He's entertaining, and knows about such queer things, that none of the rest of us know, and believes such incredible things, that none of the rest of us believe. Besides, like Arthur, he's all out on his job. He's still touchingly full of faith, even after all that has and hasn't happened, in a new heaven and a new earth. He believed at that time that the League of Nations was going to kill war, that the Labour Party were going to kill industrial inequity, that the country was going to kill the Coalition Government, that the Christian Church was going to kill selfishness, that some one was going to kill Horatio Bottomley, and that we were all going to kill Potterism. A perfect orgy of murders, as Arthur said, and all of them so improbable.

Jukie is curate in a slummy parish near Covent Garden. He succeeds, apparently, in really being friends—equal and intimate friends—with a lot of the men in his parish, which is queer for a person of his kind. I suppose he learnt how while he was in the ranks. He deserved to; Arthur told me that he had persistently refused promotion because he wanted to go on living with the men; and that's not a soft job, from all accounts, especially for a clean and over-fastidious person like Jukie. Of course he's very popular, because he's very attractive. And, of course, it's spoilt him a little. I never knew a very popular and attractive person who wasn't a little spoilt by it; and in Jukie's case it's a pity, because he's too good for that sort of thing, but it hasn't really damaged him much.

He came in that evening saying, 'Katherine, I want to speak to you,' and sat down looking rather worried and solemn. He plunged into it at once, as he always does.

'Have you heard any talk lately about Gideon?' he asked me.

'Nothing more interesting than usual,' I said. 'But I seldom hear talk. I don't mix enough. We don't gossip much in the lab, you know. I look to you and my Fleet Street friends for spicy personal items. What's the latest about Arthur?'

'Just this,' he said. 'People are going about saying that he pushed
Hobart downstairs.'

I felt then as if I had known all along that of course people were saying that.

'Then why isn't he arrested?' I asked stupidly.

'He probably will be, before long,' said Jukie. 'There's no evidence yet to arrest him on. At present it's merely talk, started by that Pinkerton woman, and sneaking about from person to person in the devilish way such talk does…. I was with Gideon yesterday, and saw two people cut him dead…. You see, it's all so horribly plausible; every one knows they hated each other and had just quarrelled; and it seems he was there that night, just before it happened. He went home with Jane.'

I remembered that they had left my place together. But neither Arthur nor Jane had told me that he had gone home with her.

'The inquest said it was accidental,' I said, protesting against something, I didn't quite know what.

Jukie shrugged his shoulders.

'That's not very likely to stop people talking.'

He added after a moment, 'But it's got to be stopped somehow…. I went to an awful bazaar this afternoon, on purpose to meet that woman. I met her. I spoke to her. I told her to chuck it. She as good as told me she wasn't going to. I mentioned the libel law—she practically dared Gideon to use it against her. She means to go on. She's poisoning the air with her horrible whispers and slanders. Why can't some one choke her? What can we do about it, that's the question? Ought one of us to tell Gideon? I'm inclined to think we ought.'

'Are you sure he doesn't know it already?'

'No, I'm not sure. Gideon knows most things. But the person concerned is usually the last to hear such talk. And, in case he has no suspicion, I think we should tell him.'

'And get him to issue, through the Fact, a semi-official declaration that "the whole story is a tissue of lies."'

Then I wished I hadn't used that particular phrase. It was an unfortunate one. It suggested a similarity between Lady Pinkerton's story and Mr. Bullitt's, between Arthur Gideon's denial and Lloyd George's.

Jukie's eyes met mine swiftly, not dreamy and introspective as usual, but keen and thoughtful.

'Katherine,' he said, 'we may as well have this out. It won't hurt Gideon here. Is it a lie? I believe so, but, frankly, I don't feel certain. I don't know what to think. Do you?'

I considered it, looking at it all ways. The recent past, Arthur's attitude and Jane's, were all lit up by this horrible flare of light which was turned upon them.

'No,' I said at last. 'I don't know, either…. We can't assume for certain that it is a lie.'

Jukie let out a long breath, and leant forward in his chair, resting his head on his hands.

'Poor old Gideon,' he said. 'It might have happened, without any intention on his part. If Hobart found him there with Jane … and if they quarrelled … Gideon's got a quick temper, and Hobart always made him see red…. He might have hit him—pushed him down, without meaning to injure him—and then it would be done. And then—if he did it—he must have left the house at once … perhaps not knowing he'd killed him. Perhaps he didn't know till afterwards. And then Jane might have asked him not to say anything … I don't know. I don't know. Perhaps it's nonsense; perhaps it is a tissue of lies. I hope to God it is…. I only know one thing that makes me even suspect it may be true, and that is that Gideon has been absolutely miserable, and gone about like a man half stunned, ever since it happened. Why?'

He shot the question at me, hoping I had some answer. But I had none. I shook my head.

'Well,' said Jukie sadly, 'it isn't, I suppose, our business whether he did or didn't do it. That's between him and—himself. But it is our business, whether he's innocent or guilty, to put him on his guard against this talk. It's for you or me to do that, Katherine. Will you?'

'If you like.'

'I'd rather you did it, if you will … I think he's less likely to think that you're trying to find things out…. You see, I warned him once before, about another thing, and he might think I was linking it in my mind with that.'

'With Jane,' I said, and he nodded.

'Yes. With Jane … I spoke to him about Jane a few days before it happened. I thought it might be some use. But I think it only made things worse…. I'd rather leave this to you, unless you hate it too much…. Oh, it's all pretty sickening, isn't it? Gideon—Gideon in this sort of mess. Gideon, the best of the lot of us…. You see, even if it's all moonshine about Hobart, as I'm quite prepared to believe it probably is, he's gone and given plausibility to the yarn by falling in love with Hobart's wife. Nothing can get round that. Why couldn't he have chucked it—gone away—anything—when he felt it coming on? A strong, fine, keen person like that, to be bowled over by his sloppy emotions and dragged through the mud, like any beastly sensualist, or like one of my own cheery relations…. I'd rather he'd done Hobart in. There'd have been some sense about that, if he had. After all, it would have been striking a blow against Potterism. Only, if he did do it, it would be more like him to face the music and own to it. What I can't fit into the picture is Gideon sneaking away in the dark, afraid … Oh well, it's not my business … Good-night, Katherine. You'll do it at once, won't you? Ring him up to-morrow and get him to dine with you or something. If there's any way of stopping that poisonous woman's tongue, we'll find it…. Meanwhile, I shall tell our parish workers that Leila Yorke's works are obscene, and that they're not to read them to mother's meetings as is their habit.'

I sat up till midnight, wondering how on earth I was going to put it to Arthur.

7

I didn't dine with Arthur. I thought it would last too long, and that he might want me to go, and that I should certainly want to go, after I had said what I had to say. So I rang him up at the office and asked if he could lunch. Not at the club; it's too full of people we know, who keep interrupting, and who would be tremendously edified at catching murmurs about libel and murder and Lady Pinkerton being poisoned. So I said the Temple Bar restaurant in Fleet Street, a disagreeable place, but so noisy and crowded that you can say what you like unheard—unheard very often by the person you are addressing, and certainly by every one else.

We sat downstairs, at a table at the back, and there I told him, in what hardly needed to be an undertone, of the rumours that were being circulated about him. I felt like a horrid woman in a village who repeats spiteful gossip and says, 'I'm telling you because I think you ought to know what's being said.' As a matter of fact, this was the one and only case I have ever come across in which I have thought the person concerned ought to know what was being said. As a rule, it seems the last thing they ought to know.

He listened, staring at the tablecloth and crumbling his bread.

'Thank you,' he said, 'for telling me. As a matter of fact, I knew. Or, anyhow, guessed…. But I'm not sure that anything can be done to stop it.'

'Unless,' I said, looking away from him, 'you could find grounds for a libel action. You might ask a lawyer.'

'No,' he returned quickly. 'That's quite impossible. Out of the question…. There are no grounds. And I wouldn't if there were. I'm not going to have the thing made a show of in the courts. It's exactly what the Pinkertons would enjoy—a first-class Pinkerton scoop. No, I shall let it alone.'

'Is there no way of stopping it, then?' I asked.

'Only one,' he murmured, absently, beneath his breath, then caught himself up. 'I don't know. I think not.'

I didn't make any further suggestions. What was the good of advising him to remonstrate with the Pinkertons? If they were lying, it was the obvious course. If they weren't, it was an impossible one. I let it alone.

Arthur was frowning as he ate cold beef.

'There's one thing,' he said. 'Does Jane know what is being said? Do you suppose her parents have talked about it to her?'

I said I didn't know, and he went on frowning. Then he murdered a wasp with his knife—a horrible habit at meals, but one practised by many returned soldiers, who kill all too readily. I suppose after killing all those Germans, and possibly Oliver Hobart, a wasp seems nothing.

'Well,' he said absently, when he was through with the wasp, 'I don't know. I don't know,' and he seemed, somehow, helpless and desperate, as if he had come to the end of his tether.

'I must think it over,' he said. And then he suddenly began to talk about something else.

8

Arthur's manner, troubled rather than indignant, had been against him. He had dismissed the idea of a libel action, and not proposed to confront his libellers in a personal interview. Every circumstance seemed against him. I knew that, as I walked back to the laboratory after lunch.

And yet—and yet.

Well, perhaps, as Jukie would say, it wasn't my business. My business at the moment was to carry on investigations into the action of carbohydrates. Arthur Gideon had nothing to do with this, nor I with his private slayings, if any.

I wrote to Jukie that evening and told him I had warned Arthur, who apparently knew already what was being said, but didn't seem to be contemplating taking any steps about it.

So that was that.

Or so I thought at the time. But it wasn't. Because, when I had posted my letter to Jukie, and sat alone in my room, smoking and thinking, at last with leisure to open my mind to all the impressions and implications of the day (I haven't time for this in the laboratory), I began to fumble for and find a new clue to Arthur's recent oddness. For twenty-four hours I had believed that he had perhaps killed Oliver Hobart. Now, suddenly I didn't. But I was clear that there was something about Oliver Hobart's death which concerned him, touched him nearly, and after a moment it occurred to me what it might be.

'He suspects that Jane did it,' I said, slowly and aloud. 'He's trying to shield her.'

With that, everything that had seemed odd about the business became suddenly clear—Arthur's troubled strangeness, Jane's dread of meeting him, her determined avoidance of any reference to that night, her sudden fit of crying, Arthur's shrinking from the idea of giving the talk against him publicity by a libel action, his question, 'Does Jane know?' his remark, to himself, that there was only one way of stopping it. That one way, of course, would be to make Jane tell her parents the truth, so that they would be silenced for ever. As it was, the talk might go on, and at last official investigations might be started, which would lead somehow to the exposure of the whole affair. The exposure would probably take the form of a public admission by Jane; I didn't think she would stand by and see Arthur accused without speaking out.

So I formed my theory. It was the merest speculation, of course. But it was obvious that there was something in the manner of Oliver Hobart's death which badly troubled and disturbed both Arthur and Jane. That being so, and taking into account their estrangement from one another, it was difficult not to be forced to the conclusion that one of them knew, or anyhow guessed, the other to have caused the accident. And, knowing them both as I did, I believed that if Arthur had done it he would have owned to it. Wouldn't one own to it, if one had knocked a man downstairs in a quarrel and killed him? To keep it dark would seem somehow cheap and timid, not in Arthur's line.

Unless Jane had asked him to; unless it was for her sake.

It occurred to me that the thing to do was to go straight to Jane and tell her what was being said. If she didn't choose to do anything about it, that was her business, but I was determined she should know.

9

An hour later I was in Jane's drawing-room. Jane was sitting at her writing-table, and the room was dim except for the light from the reading-lamp that made a soft bright circle round her head and shoulders. She turned round when I came in and said, 'Hallo, K. What an unusual hour. You must have something very important to say, old thing.'

'I have rather,' I said, and sat down by her. 'It's this, Jane. Do you know that people are saying—spreading it about—that Arthur killed your husband?'

It was very quiet in the room. For a moment I heard nothing but the ticking of a small silver clock on the writing-table. Jane sat quite still, and stared at me, not surprised, not angry, not shocked, but with a queer, dazed, blind look that reminded me of Arthur's own.

Then I started, because some one in the farther shadows of the room drew a long, quivering breath and said 'Oh,' on a soft, long-drawn note. Looking round, I saw Clare Potter. She had just got up from a chair, and was standing clutching its back with one hand, looking pale and sick, as if she was going to faint.

I hadn't, of course, known Clare was there, or I wouldn't have said anything. But I was rather irritated; after all, it wasn't her business, and I thought it rather absurd the way she kept up her attitude of not being able to bear to hear Oliver Hobart's death mentioned.

I got up to go. After all, I had nothing more to say. I didn't want to stop and pry, only to let Jane know.

But as I turned to go, I remembered that I had one more thing to say.

'It was Lady Pinkerton who started it and who is keeping it up,' I told
Jane. 'Can you—somehow—stop her?'

Jane still stared at me, stupidly. After a moment she half whispered, slowly, 'I—don't—know.'

I stood looking at her for a second, then I went, without any more words.

All the way home I saw those two white faces staring at me, and heard
Jane's whisper 'I—don't—know….'

I didn't know, either.

I only knew, that evening, one thing—that I hated Jane, who had got Arthur into this mess, and 'didn't know' whether she could get him out of it or not.

And I may as well end what I have got to tell by saying something which may or may not have been apparent to other people, but which, anyhow, it would be Potterish humbug on my part to try to hide. For the last five years I had cared for Arthur Gideon more than for any one else in the world. I saw no reason why I shouldn't, if I liked. It has never damaged any one but myself. It has damaged me in two ways—it has made it sometimes difficult to give my mind to my work, and it has made me, often, rather degradingly jealous of Jane. However, you would hardly (I hope) notice it, and anyhow it can't be helped.