“I did most certainly,” Gifford answered promptly.

“His manners struck me as deplorable,” Kelson agreed.

“Yes,” their host continued.  “It never seemed to occur to the fellow that some little sympathy was due also to us.  But he seemed rather to suggest that the tragedy was our fault.  In ordinary circumstances I should have dealt pretty shortly with him.  But it was not worth while.”

“No,” Kelson observed, “All the same, you need not allow a continuation of his behaviour.”

“I don’t intend to,” Morriston replied with decision.  “I hope the man won’t want to come ferreting in the place; that may well be left to the police; but if he does I can’t very well refuse him leave.  He must be free of the house, or at any rate of the tower.”

“Or,” put in Kelson, “he’ll have a grievance against you, and accuse you of trying to burk the mystery.”

“Is he a very objectionable person?” Miss Morriston asked.  “We passed one another in the hall as he left the house and I received what seemed a rather unmannerly stare.”

Her brother laughed.  “My dear Edith, the type of man you would simply loathe.  Abnormally, unpleasantly sharp and suspicious; with a cleverness which takes no account of tact or politeness, he questions you as though you were in the witness-box and he a criminal barrister trying to trap you.  I don’t know whether he behaves more civilly to ladies, but from our experience of the man I should recommend you to keep out of his way.”

“I shall,” his sister replied.

“I should say no respecter of persons—­or anything else,” Kelson remarked with a laugh.

“Let us hope he won’t take it into his head to worry us,” Miss Morriston said with quiet indifference.

“I am sorry to see,” Morriston observed later on when the ladies had left them, “that the papers are beginning to take a sensational view of the affair.”

“Yes,” Kelson responded; “we noticed that.  It will be a nuisance for you.”

“The trouble has already begun,” his host continued somewhat ruefully.  “We have had two or three reporters here to-day worrying the servants with all sorts of absurd questions.  It is, of course, all to be accounted for by the medical evidence.  That has put them on the scent of what they will no doubt call a sensational development.  So long as it looked like nothing beyond suicide there was not so much likelihood of public interest in the case.”

“The police—­” Gifford began.

“The police,” Morriston took up the word, “are fairly nonplussed.  It seems the farther they get the less obvious does the suicide theory become.  Well, we shall see.”

“In the meantime I’m afraid you and Miss Morriston are in for a heap of undeserved annoyance,” Kelson observed sympathetically.

“Yes,” Morriston agreed gloomily; “I am sorry for Edith; she is plucky, and feels it, I expect, far more than she cares to show.”