eyes showed signs
of sleeplessness, and he had not the air of a man who has good news to
impart. As soon as they were inside the room he locked the door.

"Duncombe," he said, "there is a train which leaves Paris for London at
four o'clock. You must catch it--if you are allowed to. Don't look like
that, man. I tell you you've got to do it. If you are in Paris to-night
you will be in prison."

"For what offence?" Duncombe asked.

"For the murder of Mademoiselle Flossie. They are training the witnesses
now. The whole thing is as easy as A B C. They can prove you so guilty
that not even your best friend would doubt it. Pack your clothes, man,
or ring for the valet."

Duncombe hesitated, but he, too, was pale.

"Are you serious, Spencer?" he asked.

"I am so serious," Spencer answered, "that unless you obey me I will not
move another finger in this matter. You lose nothing by going. All that
a human being can do I will do! But you lose your life, or, at any rate,
your liberty if you stay."

Duncombe bowed his head to fate.

"Very well!" he said. "I will go!"

CHAPTER XIII

"HER VOICE."

"You have heard now," Duncombe said, finally, "the whole history of my
wanderings. I feel like a man who has been beating the air, who has been
at war with unseen and irresistible forces. I never seemed to have a
chance. In plain words, I have failed utterly!"

The two men were sitting in a room impossible of classification. It
might have been a study, smoking-room, or gun-room. The walls were
adorned with stags' heads and various trophies of the chase. There were
guns and rifles in plenty in a rack by the chimney-piece, a row of
bookcases along the north wall, golf clubs, cricket bats, and foils
everywhere. A pile of logs ready for burning stood in the open grate,
and magnificent rugs were spread about the floor. Nowhere was there the
slightest trace of a woman's presence, for Duncombe had no sisters, and
his was entirely a bachelor household.

Duncombe himself and Andrew Pelham were seated in great easy-chairs in
front of the open window. It was his first fine evening at home, and he
was drinking in great draughts of the fresh pure air, fragrant with the
perfume of roses and huge clusters of wallflowers. Paris had seemed to
him like a great oven. All the time he had been half stifled, and yet he
knew very well that at a word from Spencer he would have returned there
at an hour's notice. He knew, too, that the home