came more and more real. Suddenly with a start I perceived
it was real. I had to do things forthwith.

I rang the bell and asked for an _Orario_. "I shan't want these rooms. I
have to go back to England," I said. "Yes,--I have had bad news." ...

Sec. 8

"We've only got to explain," I told myself a hundred times during that
long sleepless journey. The thundering wheels so close beneath my head
echoed: "Explain. Oh yes! Explain! Explain! Explain!"

And something, a voice to which I would not listen, urged: "Suppose
they do not choose to believe what you explain."

When I sat face to face with Maxwell Hartington, my solicitor, in his
ink-splashed, dirty, yellow-grained room with its rows of black tin
boxes, I could no longer ignore that possibility. Maxwell Hartington sat
back in his chair after his fashion, listening to my story, breathing
noisily through his open mouth, perspiring little beads and looking more
out of condition than ever. I never knew a man so wine-sodden and so
sharp-witted.

"That's all very well, Stratton," he said, "between ourselves. Very
unfortunate and all that sort of thing. But it doesn't satisfy Justin
evidently; and we've got to put a different look on it if we can, before
we go before a jury: You see----" He seemed to be considering and
rejecting unpalatable phrases "They won't understand."

"But," I said, "after all--, a mere chance of the same hotel. There must
be more evidence than that."

"You spent the night in adjacent rooms," he said dryly.

"Adjacent rooms!" I cried.

He regarded me for a moment with something bordering on admiration.
"Didn't you know?" he said.

"No."

"They've routed that out. You were sleeping with your two heads within a
yard of one another anyhow. Thirty-six you had, and she had
thirty-seven."

"But," I said and stopped.

Maxwell Hartington's admiration gave place I think to a slight
resentment at my sustained innocence. "And Lady Mary changed rooms with
her secretary two nights before--to be near the vacant room. The
secretary went into number 12 on the floor below,--a larger room, at
thirteen francs a day, and one not exposed to the early daylight...."

He turned over a paper on his desk. "You didn't know, of course," he
said. "But what I want to have"--and his voice grew wrathful--"is sure
evidence that you didn't know. No jury on earth is going to believe you
didn't know. No jury!---- Why,"--his mask dropped--"no man on earth is
going to