He was trying to get two names back to his memory,
and he felt sure he had much better let events discover and display
themselves.

'Still, I don't quite know that _I_ can stay,' Professor Flick began to
argue. Mr. Copping struck impatiently in:

'Why, of course, Professor Flick, you have just got to stay. We are
bound to stay, don't you see? We must throw all the light we can on this
distressing business.'

'But I can't throw any light,' the hapless Professor said, 'upon
anything. And I came to England about folk-lore, and not about cases of
dynamite and fire and explosions.'

The dawn was now beginning to throw light on various things. It was
flooding the corridor--there were splashes of red sunlight on the
floors, which to the excited imagination of Helena seemed like little
pools of blood. There was a stained window in the corridor which
certainly caught the softest stream of the entering sunlight, and
transfigured it there and then into a stream of blood. Helena and the
Duchess had stolen back into the corridor; Mrs. Sarrasin and Miss Paulo
were in attendance on Captain Sarrasin; the Duchess and Helena both felt
in a vague manner that sense of being rather in the way which most women
feel when some serious business concerning men is going on, and they
have no particular mission to stanch a wound or smooth a pillow.

'I think, dear child,' the Duchess whispered, 'we had better go and
leave these men to themselves.'

But Helena's eyes were fixed on the Dictator's face. She had heard about
the easy way in which he had got the fire under, but just now she felt
sure that he was thinking of something quite different and something
very serious.

'Stay a moment, Duchess,' she entreated; 'they won't mind us--or my
father will tell us to go if they want us away.'

Then there was a little commotion caused by the arrival of the coroner
for that part of the county, two local doctors, and the local inspector
of police. The coroner, Mr. St. John Raven, was very proud of being
summoned to the house of so great a man as Sir Rupert Langley.
Mysterious deaths and mysterious crimes in the home of a Minister of
State are events that cannot happen in the lives of many coroners. The
doctors and the police inspector were less swelled up with pride. The
sore throat of a lady's maid would at any time bring a doctor to Seagate
Hall; the most commonplace burglary, without any question of jewels,
would summon the police inspector thi