The examination of Morris had reached a point at which I found myself hard put to it to retain even a seeming of composure.  All Gatton’s questions had been leading up to this suggestion, as I now perceived clearly enough; and from the cousins’ quarrel to Isobel, Eric’s fiancee, who was engaged at the New Avenue Theater, was an inevitable step.  But: 

“Possibly, sir,” was Morris’s only answer.

Inspector Gatton stared hard at the man for a moment or so, then: 

“Very well,” he said.  “Take my advice and turn in.  There will be much for you to do presently, I am afraid.  Who was Sir Marcus’s solicitor?”

Morris gave the desired information in a tired, toneless voice, and we departed.  Little did Gatton realize that his words were barbed, when, as we descended to the street, he said: 

“I have a call to make at Scotland Yard next, after which my first visit will be to the stage-doorkeeper of the New Avenue Theater.”

“Can I be of further assistance to you at the moment?” I asked, endeavoring to speak casually.

“Thanks, no.  But I should welcome your company this afternoon at my examination of the Red House.  I understand that it is in your neighborhood, so perhaps as you are also professionally interested in the case, you might arrange to meet me there.  Are you returning home now or going to the Planet office?”

“I think to the office,” I replied.  “In any event ’phone there making an appointment and I will meet you at the Red House.”

CHAPTER IV

ISOBEL

Ten minutes later I was standing in a charming little boudoir which too often figured in my daydreams.  My own photograph was upon the mantelpiece, and in Isobel’s dark eyes when she greeted me there was a light which I lacked the courage to try to understand.  I had not at that time learned what I learned later, and have already indicated, that my own foolish silence had wounded Isobel as deeply as her subsequent engagement to Eric Coverly had wounded me.

The psychology of a woman is intriguing in its very naivete, and now as she stood before me, slim and graceful in her well-cut walking costume, a quick flicker of red flaming in her cheeks and her eyes alight with that sweet tantalizing look in which expectation and a hot pride were mingled, I wondered and felt sick at heart.  Desirable she was beyond any other woman I had known, and I called myself witling coward, to have avoided putting my fortune to the test on that fatal day of my departure for Mesopotamia.  For just as she looked at me now she had looked at me then.  But to-day she was evidently on the point of setting out—­I did not doubt with the purpose of meeting Eric Coverly; on that day of the irrevocable past she had been free and I had been silent.

“You nearly missed me, Jack,” she said gayly.  “I was just going out.”