nt of
hope. He talked with the candour and freedom of one young man confiding in
another. When he had finished he looked at his companion expectantly, but
Barrant's eyes were coldly official.

"A strange story!" he said.

"A true one," Charles eagerly rejoined. "Thalassa has been walking along
the coast ever since in the expectation of finding this man. He will kill
him if he meets him."

It was Barrant's lot to listen to many strange stories which were always
true, according to the narrators, but generally they caused him to feel
ashamed of the poverty of human invention. He was not immediately
concerned to discover whether Thalassa's story was true or false, or
whether it had been concocted between him and Charles with the object of
deceiving the authorities. The consideration of that infamous brownfaced
scoundrel's confession could be postponed--if it had ever been made. The
present business was with Charles Turold. There was something infernally
mysterious in his unexpected reappearance in that spot. He had gone to
London when he disappeared--he admitted that. What had brought him back?
To see Thalassa, as he said, in order to try and get at the truth?
Nonsense! He--Barrant--was not simple enough to believe that. What then?

Barrant was not prepared to supply a ready answer to that question. But
his trained ear had detected many gaps in the young man's own narrative
which, filled in, might give it. Turold knew more than he had said--he was
keeping things back. Again--what things? Behind him stood the shadowy
figure of the girl and her unexplained flight. Barrant's instinct told him
that Charles was shielding her. He turned to the task of endeavouring to
reach the truth.

"Let's go back a bit," he said casually. "You've left one or two points in
your own story unexplained. What about the key?"

"The key?" Charles started slightly. You mean--"

"I mean the key of the room upstairs. You said you found the key in the
passage outside. You must have locked the door after you and taken it away
with you."

"I did," replied the young man, in some hesitation.

"For what reason?"

Charles realized that he was on very thin ice. In his intense
preoccupation with Thalassa's story he had forgotten that his own
impulsive actions on that night must be construed as proof of his own
guilt or bear too literal interpretation of having been done to shield
Sisily. He saw that he was in a position of extraordinary difficulty.