’Then I will tell you.  You will understand.  I must tell someone.  I loved her.’

He touched the elm-wood gently, and hurried out of the room by the
French window.

* * * * *

Four days later Mr. Senior Polycarp called on Hugo in his central office.

In the meantime the inquest had proved the correctness of Mr. Darcy’s diagnosis.  Francis Tudor was buried, and Francis Tudor’s wife was buried.  Hugo, who had accompanied the funerals disguised as one of his own ‘respectful attendants,’ saw scarcely anyone.  He had to recover the command of his own soul, and to adopt some definite attitude towards the army of suspicions which naturally had assailed him.  Could he believe Darcy?  He decided that he could, and that he must.  Darcy had inspired him with confidence, and there was no doubt that the man had an extensive practice in Paris, and was well known at the British Embassy.  Camilla, then, had really died of typhoid fever on her honeymoon, and hence Ravengar had not murderously compassed her death.  And people did die of typhoid fever, and people did die on their honeymoons.

Either Ravengar’s threats had been idle, or Fate had mercifully robbed him of the opportunity to execute them.  Hugo remembered that he had begun by regarding the threats as idle, and that it was only later, in presence of Camilla’s corpse, that he had thought otherwise of them.  So he drove back the army of suspicions, and settled down to accustom himself to the eternal companionship of a profound and irremediable grief.

Then it was that Polycarp called.

‘I come to you,’ said the white-moustached solicitor, ’on behalf of my late client, Mr. Tudor.  He made his will after his marriage, and before starting for Paris, and it contains a peculiar clause.  Mr. Tudor had the flat on a three years’ agreement, renewable at his option for a further period of two years.  Over two years of the three are expired.’

‘That is so,’ said Hugo.  ’You want to get rid of the tenancy at once?  Well, I don’t mind.  I can easily—­’

‘No,’ Polycarp interrupted him, ’I wish to give notice of renewal.  The will provides that if the testator should die within two months of the date of it the flat shall be sealed up exactly as it stands for twelve months after his death, and that the estate shall be held by me, as executor and trustee, for that period, and then dealt with according to instructions deposited in the testator’s private safe in the vault which I rent from you in your Safe Deposit.’

‘But—­’

’I have just sealed up the flat—­doors, windows, ventilators, everything.’

‘Mr. Polycarp, this is impossible.’

‘Not at all.  It is done.’

‘But the reason?’

’I know no more than yourself.  As executor, I have carried out the terms of the will.  I thought that you, as landlord, were entitled to the information which I have given you.’