“I do,” said Mr. Penrose composedly.  “I believe that a devil carried him off, and that its name was delirium tremens.  We can guess, can’t we, Irechester, why he smashed or burnt everything, and fled in mad terror into the darkness?  Where to?  Was he drowned at sea, or did he take his life, or did he rot to death in some filthy hole?  Nobody knows.  But the grave he dug is there in the Tower, unless it’s been filled up since old Saffron has lived there.”

“Why in the world wasn’t it filled up before?” asked Alec Naylor with a laugh.  “People lived in the cottage, didn’t they?”

“I’ve visited the cottage often,” Irechester interposed, “when various people had it, but I never saw any signs of the Tower being used.”

“It never was, I’m sure; and as for the grave, well, Alec, in country parts, to this day, you’d be thought a bold man if you filled up a grave that your neighbor had dug for himself, and such a neighbor as Captain Duggle!  He might take it into his head some night to visit it, and if he found it filled up there’d be trouble, nasty trouble!” His laugh cackled out rather uncomfortably.  Gertie shivered, and one of the subalterns gulped down his port.

“Old Saffron’s a man of education, I believe.  No doubt he pays no heed to such nonsense, and has had the thing covered up,” said Naylor.

“As to that I don’t know.  Perhaps you do, Irechester?  He’s your patient, isn’t he?”

Dr. Irechester sat four places from Mary.  Before he replied to the question he cast a glance at her, smiling rather mockingly.  “I’ve attended him on one or two occasions, but I’ve never seen the inside of the Tower.  So I don’t know either.”

“Oh, but I’m curious!  I shall ask Mr. Beaumaroy,” cried Cynthia.

The ironical character of Irechester’s smile grew more pronounced, and his voice was at its driest:  “Certainly you can ask Beaumaroy, Miss Walford.  As far as asking goes, there’s no difficulty.”

A pause followed this pointed remark, on which nobody seemed disposed to comment.  Mrs. Naylor ended the session by rising from her chair.

But Mary Arkroyd was disquieted, worried as to how she stood with Irechester, vaguely but insistently worried over the whole Tower Cottage business.  Well, the first point she could soon settle, or try to settle, anyhow.

With the directness which marked her action when once her mind was made up, she waylaid Irechester as he came into the drawing-room; her resolute approach sufficed to detach Naylor from him; he found himself for the moment isolated from everybody except Mary.

“You got my letter, Dr. Irechester?  I—­I rather expected an answer.”

“Your conduct was so obviously and punctiliously correct,” he replied suavely, “that I thought my answer could wait till I met you here to-day, as I knew that I was to have the pleasure of doing.”  He looked her full in the eyes.  “You were placed, my dear colleague, in a position in which you had no alternative.”