“Sir Burnham has been dead for several years, I believe?” I asked tentatively.

“For several years, yes.”

Without returning to the peremptory tone which had distinguished his earlier manner, Dr. Damar Greefe coldly but courteously blocked my path to discussion of the Coverly family; and after several abortive attempts to draw him out upon the point, I recognized this deliberate design and abandoned the matter.

The storm was moving westward, and although brilliant flashes of lightning several times lighted up the queer room, gleaming upon the gayly-painted lid of an Egyptian sarcophagus or throwing into horrid relief some anatomical specimen in one of the cases, the thunder crashed no more over the house.  But its booming reached my ears from away upon a remote spur of the hills.  I became aware of a growing uneasiness in the company of my chance host, who sat by the oddly littered table, watching me with those birdlike eyes.

“Surely,” I said, “the rain has ceased?”

“Temporarily,” he replied, glancing toward the terrace.  “But I should advise you to delay a few minutes longer.  There is every threat of a concluding downpour to come ere long.”

“Many thanks,” I returned; “I’ll risk it.  I have already trespassed unwarrantably upon your time, Dr. Greefe.  It was good of you to give me shelter.”

He rose, a tall thin figure, vaguely repellent, upon realizing that I was set on departure, and conducted me out by way of the front door.  Standing in the porch: 

“At any time that you chance to be again in my neighborhood, Mr. Addison,” he said, “I beg of you to call.  I have few visitors.”

By what process, whether of reasoning or intuition, I came to the conclusion, I know not; but as I turned the bend of the tree-roofed drive and saw the deserted lodge ahead, I knew beyond any possibility of doubt that Dr. Damar Greefe had not returned to his studies, but had swiftly passed along some path through the trees so as to head me off!  His purpose in so doing I knew not, but that he had cherished this purpose and proposed to act upon it I had divined in some way at the moment that I had left him in the porch.

Now, hastening my steps, I began to wonder if his design was to intercept me or merely to watch which way I should turn on gaining the main road.  That it was the latter I presently learned; for although my unpleasant imagination pictured the gaunt hawk-like figure lurking amid the shadows which hemmed me in, I played the part of innocence and never once looked back.

Coming out into the highroad, I turned sharply left, retracing the route by which I had come to the Eurasian doctor’s abode.  If he had suspected that I had intended to call at Friar’s Park despite his assurance that such a visit would prove futile, then he was disappointed.  A new and strange theory to account for “the Oritoga mystery” had presented itself to me—­a horrible theory, yet, so far as my present data went, a feasible one.  Above all, I realized that I had committed a strategical error in openly seeking an interview with Lady Coverly.  But I had not, when I had formed that plan, known of the existence of Dr. Damar Greefe.