“I don’t know how well he knows his own business, Major,” I said as I started again for Brede’s end of the veranda.  But I was troubled none the less.  The Major could not have influenced the sale of one share of stock in the Capitoline Company.  But that stock was a great investment; a rare chance for a purchaser with a few thousand dollars.  Perhaps it was no more remarkable that Brede should not invest than that I should not—­and yet, it seemed to add one circumstance more to the other suspicious circumstances.

* * * * *

When I went upstairs that evening, I found my wife putting her hair to bed—­I don’t know how I can better describe an operation familiar to every married man.  I waited until the last tress was coiled up, and then I spoke: 

“I’ve talked with Brede,” I said, “and I didn’t have to catechize him.  He seemed to feel that some sort of explanation was looked for, and he was very outspoken.  You were right about the children—­that is, I must have misunderstood him.  There are only two.  But the Matterhorn episode was simple enough.  He didn’t realize how dangerous it was until he had got so far into it that he couldn’t back out; and he didn’t tell her, because he’d left her here, you see, and under the circumstances——­”

“Left her here!” cried my wife.  “I’ve been sitting with her the whole afternoon, sewing, and she told me that he left her at Geneva, and came back and took her to Basle, and the baby was born there—­now I’m sure, dear, because I asked her.”

“Perhaps I was mistaken when I thought he said she was on this side of the water,” I suggested, with bitter, biting irony.

“You poor dear, did I abuse you?” said my wife.  “But, do you know, Mrs. Tabb said that she didn’t know how many lumps of sugar he took in his coffee.  Now that seems queer, doesn’t it?”

It did.  It was a small thing.  But it looked queer, Very queer.

* * * * *

The next morning, it was clear that war was declared against the Bredes.  They came down to breakfast somewhat late, and, as soon as they arrived, the Biggleses swooped up the last fragments that remained on their plates, and made a stately march out of the dining-room, Then Miss Hoogencamp arose and departed, leaving a whole fish-ball on her plate.  Even as Atalanta might have dropped an apple behind her to tempt her pursuer to check his speed, so Miss Hoogencamp left that fish-ball behind her, and between her maiden self and contamination.

We had finished our breakfast, my wife and I, before the Bredes appeared.  We talked it over, and agreed that we were glad that we had not been obliged to take sides upon such insufficient testimony.

After breakfast, it was the custom of the male half of the Jacobus household to go around the corner of the building and smoke their pipes and cigars where they would not annoy the ladies.  We sat under a trellis covered with a grapevine that had borne no grapes in the memory of man.  This vine, however, bore leaves, and these, on that pleasant summer morning, shielded from us two persons who were in earnest conversation in the straggling, half-dead flower-garden at the side of the house.