ould do so. One would have expected
him to play a lone hand."

"Didn't you think there was something suspicious about Walters' turning
up again after he'd learned your name? There then were rather too many
coincidences."

"Suppose you enumerate them," Lawrence suggested.

"He urged you to try the mountains and followed you to Banff. Then
I've no doubt he proposed the trip up the glacier, for which he chose
the guides. He sent the best back with Miss Stephen, and while this
was the proper thing, it's curious that the other guide got drunk.
Walters gave him your flask. Then he fell when he threw the rope--at
the only place where a fall would not have led to his shooting down the
_couloir_. Afterwards, although speed was urgent, he was very slow in
going back for help."

"Besides, he knew exposure to the frost would be very dangerous for
you; you told him you had been ill," Lucy interposed.

"I did," Lawrence agreed. "Of course if the fellow had wanted to make
an end of me, it's obvious that he took a clever line; but people don't
do that kind of thing for nothing. Suppose he was a friend of Daly's,
it certainly wouldn't have suited the latter's plans."

"That," said Mrs. Stephen, "is what Lucy and I thought. You can be
frank, Mr. Foster, because we know Lawrence's story."

"He was very wise to tell it you," Foster replied, and turned to his
partner. "You imagined that Daly only wanted to extort money? Well,
my explanation is that he had another object. We'll go back to the
night Fred Hulton was shot. You thought you saw the watchman in the
passage; was he far in front?"

"Perhaps a dozen yards; it's a long passage."

"He was going towards the office and stopped at the door, with his back
to the light?"

"Yes; if he'd gone in I would have seen his face."

"And the remark you made indicated that you thought him the watchman ?"

"Suggested it," said Lawrence thoughtfully. "There might have been a
doubt."

"Exactly! The man saw you. The light shone out from the office behind
him."

"Yes," said Lawrence, "I see your point. I don't think the fellow
could have been certain I didn't get a glimpse of his face."

"You said nothing about the meeting at the inquiry, which might look as
if you had been warned not to do so."

"Nobody asked a question that led up to it. I didn't learn he wasn't
the watchman until afterwards."

Foster turned to the others. "I think my story has shown you that we