“As you put it,” I answered, “the case is extraordinarily puzzling.”

“But how else would you put it?” he demanded, with ill-concealed eagerness.

“I mean that, if Reuben is the man you believe him to be, the thing is incomprehensible.”

“Quite so,” he agreed, though he was evidently disappointed at my colourless answer.

He walked on silently for a few minutes and then said:  “I suppose it would not be fair to ask if you see any way out of the difficulty?  We are all, naturaly anxious about the upshot of the affair, seeing what poor old Reuben’s position is.”

“Naturally.  But the fact is that I know no more than you do, and as to Thorndyke, you might as well cross-examine a Whitstable native as put questions to him.”

“Yes, so I gathered from Juliet.  But I thought you might have gleaned some notion of the line of defence from your work in the laboratory—­the microscopical and photographic work I mean.”

“I was never in the laboratory until last night, when Thorndyke took me there with your aunt and Miss Gibson; the work there is done by the laboratory assistant, and his knowledge of the case, I should say, is about as great as a type-founder’s knowledge of the books that he is helping to produce.  No; Thorndyke is a man who plays a single-handed game and no one knows what cards he holds until he lays them on the table.”

My companion considered this statement in silence while I congratulated myself on having parried, with great adroitness, a rather inconvenient question.  But the time was not far distant when I should have occasion to reproach myself bitterly for having been so explicit and emphatic.

“My uncle’s condition,” Walter resumed after a pause, “is a pretty miserable one at present, with this horrible affair added to his own personal worries.”

“Has he any special trouble besides this, then?” I asked.

“Why, haven’t you heard?  I thought you knew about it, or I shouldn’t have spoken—­not that it is in any way a secret, seeing that it is public property in the city.  The fact is that his financial affairs are a little entangled just now.”

“Indeed!” I exclaimed, considerably startled by this new development.

“Yes, things have taken a rather awkward turn, though I think he will pull through all right.  It is the usual thing, you know—­investments, or perhaps one should say speculations.  He appears to have sunk a lot of capital in mines—­thought he was ‘in the know,’ not unnaturally; but it seems he wasn’t after all, and the things have gone wrong, leaving him with a deal more money than he can afford locked up and the possibility of a dead loss if they don’t revive.  Then there are these infernal diamonds.  He is not morally responsible, we know; but it is a question if he is not legally responsible, though the lawyers think he is not.  Anyhow, there is going to be a meeting of the creditors to-morrow.”