“Perhaps.”

McDowell was silent for a space, looking steadily at Keith, as if measuring him up to something.

“I don’t mind telling you that I am very deeply interested in Miss Kirkstone,” he said.  “You didn’t see her when the Judge was killed.  She was away at school, and you were on John Keith’s trail when she returned.  I have never been much of a woman’s man, Conniston, but I tell you frankly that up until six or eight months ago Miriam was one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen.  I would give a good deal to know the exact hour and date when the change in her began.  I might be able to trace some event to that date.  It was six months ago that she began to take an interest in the fate of John Keith.  Since then the change in her has alarmed me, Conniston.  I don’t understand.  She has betrayed nothing.  But I have seen her dying by inches under my eyes.  She is only a pale and drooping flower compared with what she was.  I am positive it is not a sickness—­unless it is mental.  I have a suspicion.  It is almost too terrible to put into words.  You will be going up there tonight—­you will be alone with her, will talk with her, may learn a great deal if you understand what it is that is eating like a canker in my mind.  Will you help me to discover her secret?” He leaned toward Keith.  He was no longer the man of iron.  There was something intensely human in his face.

“There is no other man on earth I would confide this matter to,” he went on slowly.  “It will take—­a gentleman—­to handle it, someone who is big enough to forget if my suspicion is untrue, and who will understand fully what sacrilege means should it prove true.  It is extremely delicate.  I hesitate.  And yet—­I am waiting, Conniston.  Is it necessary to ask you to pledge secrecy in the matter?”

Keith held out a hand.  McDowell gripped it tight.

“It is—­Shan Tung,” he said, a peculiar hiss in his voice.  “Shan Tung—­and Miriam Kirkstone!  Do you understand, Conniston?  Does the horror of it get hold of you?  Can you make yourself believe that it is possible?  Am I mad to allow such a suspicion to creep into my brain?  Shan Tung—­Miriam Kirkstone!  And she sees herself standing now at the very edge of the pit of hell, and it is killing her.”

Keith felt his blood running cold as he saw in the inspector’s face the thing which he did not put more plainly in word.  He was shocked.  He drew his hand from McDowell’s grip almost fiercely.

“Impossible!” he cried.  “Yes, you are mad.  Such a thing would be inconceivable!”

“And yet I have told myself that it is possible,” said McDowell.  His face was returning into its iron-like mask.  His two hands gripped the arms of his chair, and he stared at Keith again as if he were looking through him at something else, and to that something else he seemed to speak, slowly, weighing and measuring each word before it passed his lips.  “I am not superstitious.  It has always been