on the stone steps between the two sculptured funeral urns.  Then he lit a cigarette and smoked it in ruminant manner; eventually he took out a notebook and wrote down various phrases, numbering and renumbering them till they stood in the following order:  “(1) Squire Hawker disliked his first wife. (2) He married his second wife for her money. (3) Long Adam says the estate is really his. (4) Long Adam hangs round the island temple, which looks like a prison. (5) Squire Hawker was not poor when he gave up the estate. (6) Verner was poor when he got the estate.”

He gazed at these notes with a gravity which gradually turned to a hard smile, threw away his cigarette, and resumed his search for a short cut to the great house.  He soon picked up the path which, winding among clipped hedges and flower beds, brought him in front of its long Palladian facade.  It had the usual appearance of being, not a private house, but a sort of public building sent into exile in the provinces.

He first found himself in the presence of the butler, who really looked much older than the building, for the architecture was dated as Georgian; but the man’s face, under a highly unnatural brown wig, was wrinkled with what might have been centuries.  Only his prominent eyes were alive and alert, as if with protest.  Fisher glanced at him, and then stopped and said: 

“Excuse me.  Weren’t you with the late squire, Mr. Hawker?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, gravely.  “Usher is my name.  What can I do for you?”

“Only take me into Sir Francis Verner,” replied the visitor.

Sir Francis Verner was sitting in an easy chair beside a small table in a large room hung with tapestries.  On the table were a small flask and glass, with the green glimmer of a liqueur and a cup of black coffee.  He was clad in a quiet gray suit with a moderately harmonious purple tie; but Fisher saw something about the turn of his fair mustache and the lie of his flat hair—­it suddenly revealed that his name was Franz Werner.

“You are Mr. Horne Fisher,” he said.  “Won’t you sit down?”

“No, thank you,” replied Fisher.  “I fear this is not a friendly occasion, and I shall remain standing.  Possibly you know that I am already standing—­standing for Parliament, in fact—­”

“I am aware we are political opponents,” replied Verner, raising his eyebrows.  “But I think it would be better if we fought in a sporting spirit; in a spirit of English fair play.”

“Much better,” assented Fisher.  “It would be much better if you were English and very much better if you had ever played fair.  But what I’ve come to say can be said very shortly.  I don’t quite know how we stand with the law about that old Hawker story, but my chief object is to prevent England being entirely ruled by people like you.  So whatever the law would say, I will say no more if you will retire from the election at once.”

“You are evidently a lunatic,” said Verner.