dining-room that the Assistant Commissioner
was anxious for news. He had hardly finished when the footman
reappeared. A call for Mr. Hilton Fenley.

"Confound the telephone," snapped Fenley. "We won't have a moment's
peace all day, I suppose."

Winter winked heavily at Furneaux. He waited until Fenley's hurried
footsteps across a creaking parquet floor had died away.

"This is the bank's call," he murmured. "The other was from the Lord
knows who. I've put the Yard on the track. I wonder why he lied about
it."

"He's a queer sort of brother, too," said Furneaux. "It strikes me he
wants to put Robert in the cart."

CHAPTER V

A FAMILY GATHERING

Fenley was frowning when he reappeared.

"Another call from the Bank," he said gruffly. "Everything there is at
sixes and sevens since the news was howled through the City. That is
why I really must go to town later. I'm not altogether sorry. The
necessity of bringing my mind to bear on business will leaven the
surfeit of horrors I've borne this morning....

"Now, about my brother, Mr. Winter. While listening to Mr. Brown's
condolences--you remember Brown, the cashier, Mr. Furneaux--I was
thinking of more vital matters. A policy of concealment often defeats
its own object, and I have come to the conclusion that you ought to
know of a dispute between my father and Robert. There's a woman in the
case, of course. It's a rather unpleasant story, too. Poor Bob got
entangled with a married woman some months ago. He was infatuated at
first, but would have broken it off recently were it not for fear of
divorce proceedings."

"Would you make the position a little clearer, sir?" said Winter, who
also was listening and thinking. He was quite certain that when he
met Mr. Brown he would meet the man who had been worrying a telephone
exchange "during the last twenty minutes."

"I--I can't." And Fenley's hand brushed away some imaginary film from
before his eyes. "Bob and I never hit it off very well. We're only
half brothers, you see."

"Was your father married twice?"

"Am I to reopen a forgotten history?"

"Some person, or persons, may not have forgotten it."

"Well, you must have the full story, if at all. My father was not a
well-born man. Thirty years ago he was a trainer in the service of a
rich East Indian merchant, Anthony Drummond, of Calcutta, who owned
racehorses, and one of Drummond's daughters fell in love with him.
They ran away and got married, but th