She hesitated slightly, although there was no perceptible change in the answering voice.

“For several years; he was in my father’s employ; the—­the whole trouble originated in a joke, and—­and was quite amusing, once I understood.  Of course, after that, I had no further need for you.  Why did you persist in annoying me?”

West hesitated an instant, his mind struggling with the situation.  Was she honest, truthful, in this statement?  Could he say anything which would change her viewpoint?  She must have been deceived by these men, yet how could he expose them so she would comprehend?  He was so little certain of the facts himself, that he had nothing but suspicion to offer.

“Why do you not answer, Captain West?”

The girl’s eyes were clear, insistent, a little amused; they somehow aroused his determination.

“I will endeavour to make you understood, Miss Natalie,” he explained slowly.  “I would not have you feel that I deliberately pushed myself into this affair.  When I left Fairlawn after your dismissal, I had no thought of ever seeing you again.  I have already told you the interest I had felt in you up to that time, but your abruptness during our last interview, left me angry, and with no inclination to seek your presence again.  You can scarcely blame me for such a feeling?”

“No,” she confessed.  “I—­I was so excited and nervous I was not very nice.”

“You certainly hurt me.  I departed with a sense of wrong rankling, and no desire to come back.  But fate intervened.  You know, perhaps, that I overheard the shot which ended the life of Percival Coolidge, and I was the first to discover his dead body.  This made no particular impression on me at the time.  I supposed it a case of suicide, and so bore witness at the inquest.  The whole matter would have ended there; but the next day you discharged Sexton also, and the man sought me out at the Club.”

She leaned forward, her lips parted, a new light in her eyes.

“He told you something?  He made you suspicious?” she asked breathlessly.

“He caused me to see the affair from a somewhat different point of view—­a point of view which, I confess, revived my interest in you.  I began to believe you had been deceived, and your treatment of me arose through a misunderstanding; I thought you a victim, and that I would be a cad if I failed to stand by you.  We put this and that together, carried out some investigations quietly, and arrived at a definite conclusion.”

“What investigations?”

“In the field where the body was found first,” West went on steadily, but no longer looking at her, “tracing the different tracks through the clover.  Then I looked up that cottage in Arch Street, and thus learned about Hobart.  Somehow he seemed to fit into the picture, and your mysterious visit there made me anxious to interview the man.  He had left no address however, just faded out of sight suddenly, which increased suspicion.  Then, when we were completely baffled, Sexton learned about your conversation over the telephone.”