With an immense effort Loder controlled himself.  “Sorry!” he said.  “Go on!”

“I’m going on!  I tell you I’m going on.  I got a horrid shock when Chapham told me.  Your story came clattering through my mind.  I knew Lillian had come to see you—­I knew there was going to be a scene—­”

“But the, telegram?  The telegram?”

Chilcote paid no heed to the interruption.  He was following his own train of ideas.  “I knew she had come to see you—­I knew there was going to be a scene.  When I got to the morning-room my hand was shaking so that I could scarcely turn the handle; then, as the door opened, I could have cried out with relief.  Eve was there as well!”

“Eve?”

“Yes.  I don’t think I was ever so glad to see her in my life.”  He laughed almost hysterically.  “I was quite civil to her, and she was—­quite sweet to me—­” Again he laughed.

Loder’s lips tightened.

“You see, it saved the situation.  Even if Lillian wanted to be nasty, she couldn’t, while Eve was there.  We talked for about ten minutes.  We were quite an amiable trio.  Then Lillian told me why she’d called.  She wanted me to make a fourth in a theatre party at the ‘Arcadian’ to-night, and I —­I was so pleased and so relieved that I said yes!” He paused and laughed again unsteadily.

In his tense anxiety, Loder ground his heel into the floor.  “Go on!” he said, fiercely.  “Go on!”

“Don’t!” Chilcote exclaimed.  “I’m going on—­I’m going on.”  He passed his handkerchief across his lips.  “We talked for ten minutes or so, and then Lillian left.  I went with her to the hall door, but Chapham was there too—­so I was still safe.  She laughed and chatted and seemed in high spirits as we crossed the hall, and she was still smiling as she waved to me from her motor.  But then, Loder—­then, as I stood in the hall, it all came to me suddenly.  I remembered that Lillian must have been alone in the morning-room before Eve found her!  I remembered the telegram!  I ran back to the room, meaning to question Eve as to how long Lillian had been alone, but she had left the room.  I ran to the bureau —­but the telegram wasn’t there!”

“Gone?”

“Yes, gone.  That’s why I’ve come straight here.”

For a moment they confronted each other.  Then, moved by a sudden impulse, Loder pushed Chilcote aside and crossed the room.  An instant later the opening and shutting of doors, the hasty pulling out of drawers and moving of boxes, came from the bedroom.

Chilcote, shaken and nervous, stood for a minute where his companion had left him; at last, impelled by curiosity, he too crossed the narrow passage and entered the second room.

The full light streamed in through the open window; the keen spring air blew freshly across the house-tops; and on the window-sill a band of grimy, joyous sparrows twittered and preened themselves.  In the middle of the room stood Loder.  His coat was off, and round him on chairs and floor lay an array of waistcoats, gloves, and ties.