‘What is it?  I know it is about my father,’ said the girl.

‘He has done us a great service,’ said Merton soothingly.  He had guessed what the ‘distressing circumstances’ were in which the marquis had been restored to life.  Perhaps the reader guesses?  A discreet person, who has secretly to take charge of a corpse of pecuniary value, adopts certain measures (discovered by the genius of ancient Egypt), for its preservation.  These measures, doubtless, had revived the marquis, who thus owed his life to his kidnapper.

‘He has, I think, done us a great service,’ Merton repeated; and the girl’s colour returned to her beautiful face, that had been of marble.

‘Yet there are untoward circumstances,’ Merton admitted.  ’I wish to ask you two or three questions.  I must give you my word of honour that I have no intention of injuring your father.  The reverse; I am really acting in his interests.  Now, first, he has practised in Australia.  May I ask if he was interested in the Aborigines?’

‘Yes, very much,’ said the girl, entirely puzzled.  ‘But,’ she added, ’he was never in the Labour trade.’

‘Blackbird catching?’ said Merton.  ’No.  But he had, perhaps, a collection of native arms and implements?’

‘Yes; a very fine one.’

’Among them were, perhaps, some curious native shoes, made of emu’s feathers—­they are called Interlinia or, by white men, Kurdaitcha shoes?’

‘I don’t remember the name,’ said Miss Markham, ’but he had quite a number of them.  The natives wear them to conceal their tracks when they go on a revenge party.’

Merton’s guess was now a certainty.  The marquis had spoken of Miss Markham’s father as a ‘landlouping’ Australian doctor.  The footmarks of the feathered shoes in the snow at Kirkburn proved that an article which only an Australian (or an anthropologist) was likely to know of had been used by the body-snatchers.

Merton reflected.  Should he ask the girl whether she had told her father what, on the night of the marquis’s appearance at the office, Logan had told her?  He decided that this was superfluous; of course she had told her father, and the doctor had taken his measures (and the body of the marquis) accordingly.  To ask a question would only be to enlighten the girl.

‘That is very interesting,’ said Merton.  ’Now, I won’t pretend that I disguised myself in this way merely to ask you about Australian curiosities.  The truth is that, in your father’s interests, I must have an interview with him.’

‘You don’t mean to do him any harm?’ asked the girl anxiously.

’I have given you my word of honour.  As things stand, I do not conceal from you that I am the only person who can save him from a situation which might be disagreeable, and that is what I want to do.’

‘He will be quite safe if he sees you?’ asked the girl, wringing her hands.