“After they are gone, it will be rather lonesome for you here,” I ventured.

“I am used to being lonesome.”

“My partner’s wife, Mrs. Royce, would be very glad if you would come to her,” I said.  “I have a letter from her,” and I gave it to her.

She stood considering it with a little pucker of perplexity between her brows.  She did not attempt to open it.

“She is very kind,” she murmured, and her tone surprised and disappointed me.

“May I see you to-morrow?”

“If you wish.”

“I shall come some time during the afternoon,” I said, and took up my hat.  “There is nothing else I can do for you?”

“No, I believe not.”

She was plainly preoccupied and answered almost at random, with a coldness in sharp contrast to the warmth of her previous manner.

“Then I will say good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Lester; and thank you.”

She went with me to the door, and stood for a moment looking after me; then she turned back into the house.  And I went on down the avenue with a chill at my heart.

CHAPTER XVIII

BUILDING A THEORY

I was surprised, when I came down for dinner an hour later, to find Godfrey awaiting me.

“I always try to make it, Saturday night,” he explained.  “The chief throws the work on the other fellows, if he can.  That’s the reason I hustled away after the inquest.  The story’s all in, and now we’ll have a good dinner—­if I do say it myself—­and then a good talk.  I feel the need of a talk, Lester.”

“So do I,” I said; “though I’m afraid talking won’t help us much.”

“The funny thing about this case is,” mused Godfrey, “that the farther we get into it the thicker it grows.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “and the more one thinks about it, the less one understands.”

“Well, suppose we get away from it for a while,” said Godfrey, and turned the talk to other things.  No man could talk more delightfully of music, of art, of letters.  How he managed it I could never guess, but he seemed to have read everything, to have seen everything, to have heard everything.  Marryat, for instance; who reads Marryat nowadays?  And yet he had read the “Phantom Ship,” and so knew something of Goa.  An hour passed very quickly, but at last he rose and led the way into his study.

“A friend of mine dropped in to see me to-day at the office,” he remarked, “a Cuban planter who comes up to New York occasionally, and whom I happened to help out of a rather serious difficulty a few years ago.  Perhaps some day I’ll tell you about it.  He always brings me a bundle of his own special cigars.  I didn’t see him to-day, but he left the cigars, and I want you to try one.  Perhaps it will give you an inspiration.”

He went to his desk, opened a tin-foiled package that lay there, and carefully extracted two long cigars of a rich and glowing brown.