rday. Mary, I mean! You're eating like
a pigeon, Jack! Gracious me! Where's the pepper? Mary! Ring the bell,
Isobel. I must speak to that postman; he's made Mary forget to put any
pepper in the cruet, and any one might have seen them. It isn't
respectable!"

"Dear Aunt Alison!" I said, as the active old lady ran out (Mary not
being promptly enough in attendance). "She loves to keep running in
and out like a waiter! What a friend she has been to me, Isobel! You
could not be in better company at such a time."

"She's a darling!" agreed Isobel, and when I met her glance across the
table she blushed entrancingly.

Then, in a moment, tears were in her eyes; and knowing of whom she was
thinking, I sat abashed--guilty and repentant. I had transgressed
against the murdered man; and there and then I made a solemn, silent
vow that no word of love again should pass my lips until the fit and
proper time of mourning was over. Because I faithfully kept this vow,
I dare to hope that my sin is forgiven me.

Luncheon at that homely house, with Isobel, was an unalloyed delight;
and I regretted every passing minute which brought me nearer to the
time when I must depart. But when at last I said good-by it was a new
world upon which I looked--a new life upon which I entered. I have
said that to-day I venture to hope my poor human transgression is
forgiven me. Yet it did not go unpunished. Little did I dream, in my
strange new happiness, how soon I was to return to that house--how
soon I was to know the deadliest terror of my life.

CHAPTER XXIV

A CONFERENCE--INTERRUPTED

"The case has narrowed down," said Gatton, "from my point of view,
into the quest of one man--"

"Dr. Damar Greefe!"

"Precisely. You have asked me what I found at Friar's Park and the
Bell House, and I can answer you very briefly. Nothing! The latter
place, had quite obviously been fired in a systematic and deliberate
way. I suspect that the contents of the rooms had been soaked with
petrol. It burned to a shell and then collapsed. At the present moment
it is merely a mound of smoking ashes.

"Of course, the local fire-brigade was hopelessly ill-equipped, but
even with the most up-to-date appliances I doubt if the conflagration
could have been extinguished. The men watching the house were thrown
quite off their guard when flames began to leap out of the windows:
hence, the escape of Damar Greefe."

"You are sure he _did_ escape?"

Gatton stared at