“I’m not wanting to prejudice or bias you,” she said.  “All I want is that you should be very sure before you say—­anything.”

“I’ll be sure,” said Spargo.  “Don’t bother.  Is the tea all right?”

“Beautiful!” she answered, with a smile that made Spargo look at her again.  “Delightful!  Mr. Spargo, tell me!—­what did you think about—­about what has just happened?”

Spargo, regardless of the fact that his fingers were liberally ornamented with butter, lifted a hand and rubbed his always untidy hair.  Then he ate more tea-cake and gulped more tea.

“Look here!” he said suddenly.  “I’m no great hand at talking.  I can write pretty decently when I’ve a good story to tell, but I don’t talk an awful lot, because I never can express what I mean unless I’ve got a pen in my hand.  Frankly, I find it hard to tell you what I think.  When I write my article this evening, I’ll get all these things marshalled in proper form, and I shall write clearly about ’em.  But I’ll tell you one thing I do think—­I wish your father had made a clean breast of things to me at first, when he gave me that interview, or had told everything when he first went into that box.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because he’s now set up an atmosphere of doubt and suspicion around himself.  People’ll think—­Heaven knows what they’ll think!  They already know that he knows more about Marbury than he’ll tell, that—­”

“But does he?” she interrupted quickly.  “Do you think he does?”

“Yes!” replied Spargo, with emphasis.  “I do.  A lot more!  If he had only been explicit at first—­however, he wasn’t.  Now it’s done.  As things stand—­look here, does it strike you that your father is in a very serious position?”

“Serious?” she exclaimed.

“Dangerous!  Here’s the fact—­he’s admitted that he took Marbury to his rooms in the Temple that midnight.  Well, next morning Marbury’s found robbed and murdered in an entry, not fifty yards off!”

“Does anybody suppose that my father would murder him for the sake of robbing him of whatever he had on him?” she laughed scornfully.  “My father is a very wealthy man, Mr. Spargo.”

“May be,” answered Spargo.  “But millionaires have been known to murder men who held secrets.”

“Secrets!” she exclaimed.

“Have some more tea,” said Spargo, nodding at the teapot.  “Look here—­this way it is.  The theory that people—­some people—­will build up (I won’t say that it hasn’t suggested itself to me) is this:—­There’s some mystery about the relationship, acquaintanceship, connection, call it what you like, of your father and Marbury twenty odd years ago.  Must be.  There’s some mystery about your father’s life, twenty odd years ago.  Must be—­or else he’d have answered those questions.  Very well.  ‘Ha, ha!’ says the general public.  ’Now we have it!’ ‘Marbury,’ says the general public, ’was a man who had a hold on Aylmore.  He turned up.  Aylmore trapped him into the Temple, killed him to preserve his own secret, and robbed him of all he had on him as a blind.’  Eh?”