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 avoidan