in it he was hardly conscious
of perhaps himself, he asked in an off-hand way:

"Then why did you take such pains to wash your hands of the affair the
moment you had left the hotel?"

"I do not understand."

"You passed around the corner into--street, did you not?"

"Very likely. I could go that way as well as another."

"And stopped at the first lamp-post?"

"Oh, I see. Someone saw that childish action of mine."

"What did you mean by it?"

"Just what you have suggested. I did go through the pantomime of washing
my hands of an affair I considered definitely ended. I had resisted an
irrepressible impulse to see and talk with Miss Challoner again, and
was pleased with my firmness. Unaware of the tragic blow which had just
fallen, I was full of self-congratulations at my escape from the charm
which had lured me back to this hotel again and again in spite of my
better judgment, and I wished to symbolise my relief by an act of which
I was, in another moment, ashamed. Strange that there should have been
a witness to it. (Here he stole a look at Sweetwater.) Stranger still,
that circumstances by the most extraordinary of coincidences, should
have given so unforeseen a point to it."

"You are right, Mr. Brotherson. The whole occurrence is startling and
most strange. But life is made up of the unexpected, as none know better
than we physicians, whether our practice be of a public or private
character."

As Mr. Brotherson left the room, the curiosity to which he had yielded
once before, led him to cast a glance of penetrating inquiry behind him
full at Sweetwater, and if either felt embarrassment, it was not the
hunted but the hunter.

But the feeling did not last.

"I've simply met the strongest man I've ever encountered," was
Sweetwater's encouraging comment to himself. "All the more glory if
I can find a joint in his armour or a hidden passage to his cold,
secretive heart."

XI. ALIKE IN ESSENTIALS

"Mr. Gryce, I am either a fool or the luckiest fellow going. You must
decide which."

The aged detective, thus addressed, laid down his evening paper and
endeavoured to make out the dim form he could just faintly discern
standing between him and the library door.

"Sweetwater, is that you?"

"No one else. Sweetwater, the fool, or Sweetwater, much too wise for his
own good. I don't know which. Perhaps you can find out and tell me."

A grunt from the region of the library table, then the sarcastic re