swayed by
cautiousness more than anything else at the moment, but I fancy that
deep down in my mind was a primitive longing to settle with the man
without having recourse to the law. At any rate no policeman in the
country would have arrested him on the description I gave.

"It's a pity he got away," said the sergeant when I'd finished. "It
looks as if he's the man. What was taken, Mr. Carstairs?"

"According to Mr. Bryce there wasn't anything even touched."

"Looks as if Mr. Bryce had a past," the man said in a half-whisper meant
for my ears alone.

I regarded the suggestion with alarm. "I don't see how that could be," I
told him. "I've known him for a good many years, and my father knew him
before that. But of course I've been in the Islands for close on to four
years, and something that I am unaware of may have occurred in that
time."

"Just so," he agreed. "We'll see what Miss Drummond has to say."

"Had your uncle any enemies that you know of?" she was asked.

She answered the question with admirable adroitness. "My uncle was the
kindest of men," she said. "I can conceive of no reason why he should
have any enemies."

I suppose our very apparent frankness threw the man off his guard, for
I'm perfectly satisfied that he could have tripped us up more than once
had he had the faintest suspicion that we were not telling the exact
truth. But we strove, rather successfully as it now appears, to twist
the truth to suit ourselves without actually telling a downright lie,
and we did it in a way that seemed to satisfy him, astute though he was.
I told him but one lie that evening, though as a matter of fact it was
much nearer the truth than anything else I had said, so strangely do
things fall out.

"Miss Drummond is Mr. Bryce's niece, isn't she?" he asked.

"That's right," I said, and Moira nodded.

"Now let me see," he ran on, ticking off the points on his fingers, "you
are an old friend of the family's. That's correct, isn't it?"

"That's so," I agreed.

"Anything more?"

"I don't quite understand you," I said, with the faintest doubt at the
back of my mind. He spoke as if he knew or suspected something more than
I had told him.

He looked at Moira and then at me, and I saw that he was smiling. It was
just the sort of smile that one would expect from that portion of the
world that loves a lover.

"Oh!" I said with a relief that I made no attempt to hide, "so you've
guessed it."

"Guessed what?" Moi