Temporarily I felt myself to have become tongue-tied.  What could it be that Coverly was concealing?  The idea of complicity in the crime I scouted; nothing could have induced me to believe it.  Only one explanation presented itself to my mind, as evidently it had presented itself to Isobel’s—­another woman.  However: 

“You may depend,” I said, endeavoring to speak soothingly, “that he has some good and sufficient reason for this silence, and one which is not in any way discreditable.  Nevertheless he will have to reconsider his attitude in the near future.  Of course there are times when almost every one of us would be hard put to it to establish an alibi if we were called upon to do so—­as regards witnesses of our movements, I mean; but at least we can state roughly where we were during any hour of the day, even if we have to trust to luck to find witnesses to prove the truth of words.  His attitude of silence, Isobel, is ridiculous.”

“Have you seen the evening papers?” she asked pathetically.

“Some of them,” I replied.

“They have got my name in already,” she continued, “and my photograph appears in one.  It is outrageous how they leap at an opportunity for scandal.”

“It will all be cleared up,” I said, speaking with as much confidence as I had at my command.  “You know and I know that Coverly is innocent and I don’t believe that Gatton thinks him guilty.”

A while longer we talked and then I returned rather wearily to my chair in the room where the air was still laden with tobacco fumes.

Without believing it to contain any very special significance as I had supposed, but merely attracted by the strangeness of the passage, I remembered how Gatton had harped upon Maspero’s description of the attributes of Bast.  “Sometimes she plays with her victim as with a mouse,” etc.  The big book with its fine plates, several of them representing cats similar to that which Gatton had left behind for my more particular examination, still lay open upon the table, and I reread those passages appertaining to the character of the cat-goddess, which I had marked for Gatton’s information.  Scarce noting what I read—­for all the time I was turning over in my mind the manifold problems of the case—­I sat there for an hour perhaps, in fact until I was interrupted by the entrance of Coates.

“Shall you require me again to-night, sir?” he inquired.

“No,” I replied; “you had better turn in now, as in all probability we shall be early afoot to-morrow, Coates.  Inspector Gatton will probably be calling for me.”

“Very good.  Good-night, sir,” said Coates; and performing a smart about-turn, he walked out of the room.

I went on reading, not in quest of any particular information, but in that idle mood when one reads anything, interesting or otherwise.  For a time I heard my conscientious batman fastening doors and windows as was his nightly custom; then the door of his own room closed and I heard him no more.