rily puzzling."

"But how else would you put it?" he demanded, with ill-concealed
eagerness.

"I mean that, if Reuben is the man you believe him to be, the thing is
incomprehensible."

"Quite so," he agreed, though he was evidently disappointed at my
colourless answer.

He walked on silently for a few minutes and then said: "I suppose it
would not be fair to ask if you see any way out of the difficulty? We
are all, naturally anxious about the upshot of the affair, seeing what
poor old Reuben's position is."

"Naturally. But the fact is that I know no more than you do, and as to
Thorndyke, you might as well cross-examine a Whitstable native as put
questions to him."

"Yes, so I gathered from Juliet. But I thought you might have gleaned
some notion of the line of defence from your work in the laboratory--the
microscopical and photographic work I mean."

"I was never in the laboratory until last night, when Thorndyke took me
there with your aunt and Miss Gibson; the work there is done by the
laboratory assistant, and his knowledge of the case, I should say, is
about as great as a type-founder's knowledge of the books that he is
helping to produce. No; Thorndyke is a man who plays a single-handed
game and no one knows what cards he holds until he lays them on the
table."

My companion considered this statement in silence while I congratulated
myself on having parried, with great adroitness, a rather inconvenient
question. But the time was not far distant when I should have occasion
to reproach myself bitterly for having been so explicit and emphatic.

"My uncle's condition," Walter resumed after a pause, "is a pretty
miserable one at present, with this horrible affair added to his own
personal worries."

"Has he any special trouble besides this, then?" I asked.

"Why, haven't you heard? I thought you knew about it, or I shouldn't
have spoken--not that it is in any way a secret, seeing that it is
public property in the city. The fact is that his financial affairs are
a little entangled just now."

"Indeed!" I exclaimed, considerably startled by this new development.

"Yes, things have taken a rather awkward turn, though I think he will
pull through all right. It is the usual thing, you know--investments, or
perhaps one should say speculations. He appears to have sunk a lot of
capital in mines--thought he was 'in the know,' not unnaturally; but it
seems he wasn't after all, and the things have gone wrong, lea