Now though Ray’s attitude towards me was often puzzling, an absolute faith in his honesty was the one foundation which I had felt solid beneath my feet during these last few weeks of strange happenings.  This was the first blow which my faith had received, and I felt that at any cost I must know the truth.  After lunch I finished the papers which, when complete, it was my duty to lock away in the library safe up at the house, and secured them in my breast-pocket.  But instead of going at once to the house I set out for Braster Junction.

There was a porter there whom I had spoken to once or twice.  I called him on one side.

“Can you tell me,” I asked, “what passengers there were from London by the newspaper train this morning?”

“None at all, sir,” the man answered readily.

“Are you quite sure?” I asked.

The man smiled.

“I’m more than sure, sir,” the man answered, “because she never stopped.  She only sets down by signal now, and we had the message ‘no passengers’ from Wells.  She went through here at forty miles an hour.”

“I was expecting Colonel Ray by that train,” I remarked, “the gentleman who lectured on the war, you know, at the Village Hall.”

The man looked at me curiously.

“Why, he came down last night, same train as you, sir.  I know, because he only got out just as the train was going on, and he stepped into the station master’s house to light his pipe.”

“Thank you,” I said, giving the man a shilling.  “I must have just missed him, then.”

I left the station and walked home.  Now, indeed, all my convictions were upset.  Colonel Ray had left me outside his clubhouse last night, twenty minutes before the train started, without a word of coming to Braster.  Yet he travelled down by the same train, avoided me, lied to Lady Angela and myself this morning, and had exactly the sort of wounds which I had inflicted upon that unknown assailant who attacked me in the darkness.  If circumstantial evidence went for anything, Ray himself had been my aggressor.

I avoided the turn by Braster Grange and went straight on to the village.  Coming out of the post office I found myself face to face with Blanche Moyat.  She held out her hand eagerly.

“Were you coming in?” she asked.

“Well, not to-day,” I answered.  “I am on my way to Rowchester, and I am late already.”

She kept by my side.

“Come in for a few moments,” she begged, in a low tone.  “I want to talk to you.”

“Not the old subject, I hope,” I remarked.

She looked around with an air of mystery.

“Do you know that some one is making inquiries about—­that man?”

“I always thought it possible,” I answered, “that his friends might turn up some time or other.”

We were opposite the front of the Moyats’ house.  She opened the door and beckoned me to follow.  I hesitated, but eventually did so.  She led the way into the drawing-room, and carefully closed the door after us.