But the formal business manner of Mr. Mattingford to his chief’s wife seemed to her friendly and cordial compared with the strained greetings she received from her husband.  He motioned her to a chair and then got up from his own.

“I wrote to you to come and see me here instead of going to the house to see you,” he said, “because I thought it would be better for both.  It would have given the servants something to talk about.  I hope you don’t mind?”

She looked at him with her large dark eyes in which there was more than a suggestion of tears.  What she had read into his note, when she received it, was his determination not to go to his home to see her for fear she would interpret that as a first step towards reconciliation.

“What I wanted to speak to you about is this detective Crewe whom Miss Fewbanks has employed in connection with her father’s death,” he continued.

Her breath came quickly at this unwelcome information.  She noted that he had spoken of Sir Horace’s death and not his murder.

He began pacing backwards and forwards across the room as if with the purpose of avoiding looking at her.

“This man Crewe is a nuisance—­I might even say a danger.  I don’t know what he has found out, but I object to his ferreting into my affairs.  He must be stopped.”

She nodded her assent, for she could not trust herself to speak.  Each time he turned his back on her as he crossed the room her eyes followed him, but as he faced her she turned her gaze on the floor.

“There is no legal redress—­no legal means of dealing with his impertinent curiosity,” he went on.  “He is within his rights in trying to find out all he can.  But if he is allowed to go on unchecked the thing may reach a disastrous stage.  I have no doubt that he knows that I was at Riversbrook the night that man was killed.  He was not long in getting on the track of that.  And the more mysterious my visit seems to him—­and the fact that I have not disclosed to the police that I went up to Riversbrook and saw Sir Horace on the night of the tragedy is to his way of thinking very significant—­the more reason is there for suspecting me of complicity in the crime.”

When he turned to cross the room her eyes lingered on him and she glanced quickly at his face.

“I don’t want to dwell on matters that must pain you—­that must pain us both,” he said slowly, “but it is necessary that you should be made acquainted with the danger that threatens me from this man.  I am anxious to avoid anything in the nature of a public scandal—­I am anxious quite as much if not more on your account than my own.  But if this wretched man is allowed to go on trying to build up a case against me—­and I must admit that he would probably obtain circumstantial evidence of a kind which would make some sort of a case for the prosecution—­there is grave danger of everything coming out.  If he went to the length of having me arrested and charged with