Brinn turned rapidly and
glanced across the room.

"What was that?" asked Harley.

"I expect--it was an owl," answered Brinn. "We sometimes get them over
from the Green Park."

His high voice sounded unemotional as ever. But it seemed to Paul Harley
that his face, dimly illuminated by the upcast light from the lamp upon
the coffee table, had paled, had become gaunt.

CHAPTER VI. PHIL ABINGDON ARRIVES

On the following afternoon Paul Harley was restlessly pacing his private
office when Innes came in with a letter which had been delivered by
hand. Harley took it eagerly and tore open the envelope. A look of
expectancy faded from his eager face almost in the moment that it
appeared there. "No luck, Innes," he said, gloomily. "Merton reports
that there is no trace of any dangerous foreign body in the liquids
analyzed."

He dropped the analyst's report into a wastebasket and resumed his
restless promenade. Innes, who could see that his principal wanted
to talk, waited. For it was Paul Harley's custom, when the clue to a
labyrinth evaded him, to outline his difficulties to his confidential
secretary, and by the mere exercise of verbal construction Harley would
often detect the weak spot in his reasoning. This stage come to, he
would dictate a carefully worded statement of the case to date and thus
familiarize himself with its complexities.

"You see, Innes," he began, suddenly, "Sir Charles had taken no
refreshment of any kind at Mr. Wilson's house nor before leaving his
own. Neither had he smoked. No one had approached him. Therefore, if he
was poisoned, he was poisoned at his own table. Since he was never out
of my observation from the moment of entering the library up to that of
his death, we are reduced to the only two possible mediums--the soup or
the water. He had touched nothing else."

"No wine?"

"Wine was on the table but none had been poured out. Let us see what
evidence, capable of being put into writing, exists to support my theory
that Sir Charles was poisoned. In the first place, he clearly went in
fear of some such death. It was because of this that he consulted me.
What was the origin of his fear? Something associated with the term
Fire-Tongue. So much is clear from Sir Charles's dying words, and his
questioning Nicol Brinn on the point some weeks earlier.

"He was afraid, then, of something or someone linked in his mind with
the word Fire-Tongue. What do we know about Fire-Tongue? One thing