‘Why?’

‘I don’t care for it.  I prefer to hear you play in private.’

‘You needn’t have the least fear for me,’ said Alma loftily.

’Very well.  We’ll lunch together, as we arranged, and I’ll be at the door with a cab for you after the people have gone.’

‘Why should you trouble?’

‘I had rather, if you don’t mind.’

They drove from Baker Street to the Hall, where Alma alighted for a minute to leave her instrument, and thence to a restaurant not far away.  Alma felt no appetite, but the necessity of supporting her strength obliged her to choose some suitable refreshment.  When their order had been given, Harvey laid his hand upon an evening newspaper, just arrived, which the waiter had thrown on to the next table.  He opened it, not with any intention of reading, but because he had no mind to talk; Alma’s name, exhibited in staring letters at the entrance of the public building, had oppressed him with a sense of degradation; he felt ignoble, much as a man might feel who had consented to his own dishonour.  As his eyes wandered over the freshly-printed sheet, they were arrested by a couple of bold headlines:  ’Sensational Affair at Wimbledon —­ Mysterious Death of a Gentleman’.  He read the paragraph, and turned to Alma with a face of amazement.

‘Look there —­ read that ——­’

Alma took the paper.  She had an instantaneous foreboding of what she was to see; her heart stood still, and her eyes dazzled, but at length she read.  On the previous evening (said the report), a gentleman residing at Wimbledon, and well known in fashionable circles, Mr. Cyrus Redgrave, had met his death under very strange and startling circumstances.  Only a few particulars could as yet be made public; but it appeared that, about nine o’clock in the evening, a medical man had been hastily summoned to Mr. Redgrave’s house, and found that gentleman lying dead in a room that opened upon the garden.  There was present another person, a friend of the deceased (name not mentioned), who made a statement to the effect that, in consequence of a sudden quarrel, he had struck Mr. Redgrave with his fist, knocking him down, and, as it proved, killing him on the spot.  Up to the present moment no further details were obtainable, but it was believed that the self-accused assailant had put himself in communication with the police.  There was a rumour, too, which might or might not have any significance, that Mr. Redgrave’s housekeeper had suddenly left the house and could not be traced.

‘Dead?’

The word fell from her lips involuntarily.

‘And who killed him?’ said Harvey, just above his breath.

‘It isn’t known —­ there’s no name ——­’

‘No.  But I had a sudden thought.  Absurd —­ impossible ——­’

As Harvey whispered the words, a waiter drew near with the luncheon.  It was arranged upon the table, but lay there disregarded.  Alma took up the newspaper again.  In a moment she leaned towards her husband.