“Is there?” I exclaimed.  “I see none.”

“You are, not unnaturally, overlooking some of the circumstances that affect Miss Bellingham; but I don’t suppose she has failed to grasp their meaning.  Do you realise what her position really is?  I mean with regard to her uncle’s disappearance?”

“I don’t think I quite understand you.”

“Well, there is no use in blinking the facts,” said Thorndyke.  “The position is this:  If John Bellingham ever went to his brother’s house at Woodford, it is nearly certain that he went there after his visit to Hurst.  Mind, I say ‘if he went’; I don’t say that I believe he did.  But it is stated that he appears to have gone there; and if he did go, he was never seen alive afterwards.  Now, he did not go in at the front door.  No one saw him enter the house.  But there was a back gate, which John Bellingham knew, and which had a bell which rang in the library.  And you will remember that, when Hurst and Jellicoe called, Mr. Bellingham had only just come in.  Previous to that time Miss Bellingham had been alone in the library; that is to say, she was alone in the library at the very time when John Bellingham is said to have made his visit.  That is the position, Berkeley.  Nothing pointed has been said up to the present.  But, sooner or later, if John Bellingham is not found, dead or alive, the question will be opened.  Then it is certain that Hurst, in self-defence, will make the most of any facts that may transfer suspicion from him to someone else.  And that someone else will be Miss Bellingham.”

I sat for some moments literally paralysed with horror.  Then my dismay gave place to indignation.  “But, damn it!” I exclaimed, starting up—­“I beg your pardon—­but could anyone have the infernal audacity to insinuate that that gentle, refined lady murdered her uncle?”

“That is what will be hinted, if not plainly asserted; and she knows it.  And that being so, is it difficult to understand why she should refuse to allow you to be publicly associated with her?  To run the risk of dragging your honourable name into the sordid transactions of the police-court or the Old Bailey?  To invest it, perhaps, with a dreadful notoriety?”

“Oh, don’t! for God’s sake!  It is too horrible!  Not that I would care for myself.  I would be proud to share her martyrdom of ignominy, if it had to be; but it is the sacrilege, the blasphemy of even thinking of her in such terms, that enrages me.”

“Yes,” said Thorndyke; “I understand and sympathise with you.  Indeed, I share your righteous indignation at this dastardly affair.  So you mustn’t think me brutal for putting the case so plainly.”

“I don’t.  You have only shown me the danger that I was fool enough not to see.  But you seem to imply that this hideous position has been brought about deliberately.”

“Certainly I do!  This is no chance affair.  Either the appearances indicate the real events—­which I am sure they do not—­or they have been created of a set purpose to lead to false conclusions.  But the circumstances convince me that there has been a deliberate plot; and I am waiting—­in no spirit of Christian patience, I can tell you—­to lay my hand on the wretch who has done this.”