forelock once more, but
this time he was resisting with all his might. It meant resistance to
the strongest attribute that he possessed. The man's mind was now a
picture-gallery and now a stage. He thought in pictures and he saw in
scenes. It was no fault of Langholm's, any more than it was a merit.
Imagination was the predominant force of his intellect, as in others is
the power of reasoning, or the gift of languages, or the mastery of
figures. Langholm could no more help it than he could change the color
of his eyes, but to-night he did his best. He had mistaken invention for
discovery once already. He was grimly determined not to let it happen
twice.

To suspect Steel because he chanced to have been in the neighborhood of
Chelsea on the night of the murder, and absent from his hotel about the
hour of its committal, was not less absurd than his first suspicion of
the man who could be proved to have been lying between life and death at
the time. There had been something to connect the dead man with
Severino. There was nothing within Langholm's knowledge to connect him
with Steel. Yet Steel was the most mysterious person that he had ever
met with outside the pages of his own novels. No one knew where he had
made his money. He might well have made it in Australia; they might have
known each other out there. Langholm suddenly remembered the Australian
swagman whom he had seen "knocking down his check" at a wayside inn
within a few miles of Normanthorpe, and Steel's gratuitously explicit
statement that neither he nor his wife had ever been in Australia in
their lives. There was one lie at least, then why not two? Yet, the
proven lie might have been told by Steel simply to anticipate and allay
any possible suspicion of his wife's identity. That was at least
conceivable. And this time Langholm sought the conceivable explanation
more sedulously than the suspicious circumstance.

He had been far too precipitate in all that he had done hitherto, from
the Monday morning up to this Wednesday night. His departure on the
Monday had been in itself premature. He had come away without seeing the
Steels again, whereas he should have had an exhaustive interview with
one or both of them before embarking upon his task. But Steel's
half-hostile and half-scornful attitude was more than Langholm could
trust his temper to endure, and he had despaired of seeing Mrs. Steel
alone. There were innumerable points upon which she could have supplie