on
dreadfully with some horrid girl, and aunt has found out everything!'

'Lord! you don't say so! The old rascal! Why, he must be nearer seventy
than sixty!'

'He's just sixty-five; and the money he has given her----'

The first shock of surprise over, Darnell turned resolutely to his
mince.

'We'll have it all out after tea,' he said; 'I am not going to have my
meals spoilt by that old fool of a Nixon. Fill up my cup, will you,
dear?'

'Excellent mince this,' he went on, calmly. 'A little lemon juice and a
bit of ham in it? I thought there was something extra. Alice all right
to-day? That's good. I expect she's getting over all that nonsense.'

He went on calmly chattering in a manner that astonished Mrs. Darnell,
who felt that by the fall of Uncle Robert the natural order had been
inverted, and had scarcely touched food since the intelligence had
arrived by the second post. She had started out to keep the appointment
her aunt had made early in the morning, and had spent most of the day in
a first-class waiting-room at Victoria Station, where she had heard all
the story.

'Now,' said Darnell, when the table had been cleared, 'tell us all about
it. How long has it been going on?'

'Aunt thinks now, from little things she remembers, that it must have
been going on for a year at least. She says there has been a horrid kind
of mystery about uncle's behaviour for a long time, and her nerves were
quite shaken, as she thought he must be involved with Anarchists, or
something dreadful of the sort.'

'What on earth made her think that?'

'Well, you see, once or twice when she was out walking with her husband,
she has been startled by whistles, which seemed to follow them
everywhere. You know there are some nice country walks at Barnet, and
one in particular, in the fields near Totteridge, that uncle and aunt
rather made a point of going to on fine Sunday evenings. Of course, this
was not the first thing she noticed, but, at the time, it made a great
impression on her mind; she could hardly get a wink of sleep for weeks
and weeks.'

'Whistling?' said Darnell. 'I don't quite understand. Why should she be
frightened by whistling?'

'I'll tell you. The first time it happened was one Sunday in last May.
Aunt had a fancy they were being followed a Sunday or two before, but
she didn't see or hear anything, except a sort of crackling noise in the
hedge. But this particular Sunday they had hardly got through the stile