“He still refused to explain his movements on the night of the murder?” I asked.

“Yes, he persisted in his extraordinary silence,” said Isobel.

The look of trouble in her eyes grew more acute.

“What I cannot understand is a sort of attitude of resentment which he has lately adopted.”

“Of resentment?  Towards whom?”

“Towards me.”

“But—­”

“Oh, it’s quite incomprehensible, Jack, and it is making me horribly unhappy.  He complained so bitterly too about this police surveillance to which he is subjected.  He realizes that the coroner is almost certain to put a wrong construction on his silence, but instead of being frank about it he adopts, even when alone with me, this incomprehensible attitude of resentment.  In fact his behavior almost suggests that I am responsible for his present misfortunes.”

“He must be mad,” I said, and I expect I spoke bitterly, for Isobel lowered her eyes and her face flushed with embarrassment.

“Don’t think that I condemn him,” I added hastily, “but really in justice to you, if not in order to clear his own good name, he should speak out at once.  Are you expecting to see him to-day?”

Isobel nodded.

“I am expecting him at almost any moment,” she replied; then glancing aside at a number of daily papers which lay littered upon the floor beside the settee:  “Of course you have seen what the press has to say about it?” she added.

I nodded.

“What can you expect?” said I.  “It is one of those cases in which practically all the evidence, although it is of a purely circumstantial nature, points to an innocent man as the culprit.  I feel very keenly annoyed with Coverly, for not only is he involving both of you in a most unsavory case but he is also hindering the work of justice.  In fact by his inexplicable silence he is, although no doubt unconsciously, affording the murderer time to elude the law.”

Even as I spoke the words I heard a cab draw up in the street below, and glancing out of the window, I saw Coverly alight from the cab, pay the man and enter the doorway.  His bearing was oddly furtive, that, as I thought with a sudden pang, of a fugitive.  A few moments later he came into the room and his expression when he found me there was one of marked hostility.

Eric Coverly bore no resemblance whatever to the deceased baronet from whom he inherited the title, belonging as he did to quite another branch of the family.  Whereas Sir Marcus had been of a dark and sallow type, Eric Coverly was one of those fair, fresh-colored, open-air English types, handsome in an undistinguished way, and as a rule of a light and careless disposition.  There had never been any very close sympathy between us, for the studies to which I devoted so much time were by him regarded as frankly laughable absurdities.  Although well enough informed, he was typical of his class, and no one could justly have catalogued him as an intellectual.