They went on again, and in a few minutes the car stopped at the end of the rough moor track, close to where the black cliffs dropped to the grey sea.

Flint House rose solitary before them, perched with an air of bravado upon the granite ledge, as though defying the west wind which blustered around it.  The unfastened gate which led to the little path banged noisily in the breeze, but the house seemed steeped in desolation.  A face peeped furtively at them from a front window as they approached.  They heard a shuffling footstep and the drawing of a bolt, and the door was opened by a withered little woman who looked at them with silent inquiry.

“Where’s your husband?” asked Sergeant Pengowan.

She glanced timidly up the stairs behind her, and they saw Thalassa descending as though in answer to the question.  He scanned the police officers with a cautious eye.  Barrant returned the look with a keen observation which took in the externals of the man who was the object of Mrs. Pendleton’s suspicions.

“You are the late Mr. Turold’s servant?” he said.

“Put it that way if you like,” was the response.  “Who might you be?”

Barrant did not deign to reply to this inquiry.  “Take us upstairs,” he said.

“Pengowan wants us to look at the outside first,” said Dawfield, but Barrant was already mounting the stairs.

“You do so,” he called back, over his shoulder.  “I’ll go up.”

At the top of the staircase he waited until Thalassa reached him.  “Where are Mr. Turold’s rooms?” he asked.

Thalassa pointed with a long arm into the dim vagueness of the passage.  “Down there,” he said, “at the end.  The study on the right, the bedroom opposite.”

“Very well.  You need not come any further.”

The old man’s eyes travelled slowly upward to’ the detective’s face, but he kept his ground.

“Did you hear me?” Barrant asked sharply.  “You can go downstairs again.”

Again the other’s eyes sought his face with a brooding contemplative look.  Then he turned sullenly away with moving lips, as though muttering inarticulate words, leaving Barrant standing on the landing, watching his slow descent.

When he was quite sure that he was gone, Barrant turned down the passage-way.  He had his reasons for wishing to be alone.  The value of a vivid first impression, the effect of concentration necessary to reproduce the scene to the eyes of imagination, the mental arrangement of the facts in their proper order and conformity—­these were things which were liable to be broken into by the disturbing presence of others, by the vexatious interruption of loudly proffered explanations.

He knew all the facts that Inspector Dawfield and Sergeant Pengowan could impart.  He knew of Robert Turold’s long quest for the lost title, the object of his visit to Cornwall, his near attainment to success, his summons to his family to receive the news.  In short, he was aware of the whole sequence of events preceding Robert Turold’s violent and mysterious death, with the exception of the revelation of his life’s secret, which Mrs. Pendleton had withheld from Inspector Dawfield.  Barrant had heard all he wanted to know at second hand at that stage of his investigations, and he now preferred to be guided by his own impressions and observations.