as possible to the facts he would
surely discover for himself. "Simon and Copley talked over the
situation, night before last; Lucy naturally exaggerates the affair."

"Mr. Varr and his son quarreled. Isn't that the plain truth?"

"Doesn't a quarrel depend somewhat on the natures of the two people
involved, Mr. Creighton? Simon was fearfully obstinate, and Copley is
a little high-tempered--just to the extent that is becoming to a young
man with any spirit--and I suppose that what might be merely a normal
discussion between two such natures might--might seem like a quarrel to
other people. Mightn't it?" she added, not very hopefully.

Despite himself, the detective was forced to grin at this ingenuous, or
ingenious, argument.

"They quarreled," he summed it up, regaining his gravity. "If you will
recollect, Miss Copley, when you came into the sitting-room a while ago
you excused your sister's indisposition on the plea that she had been
through enough the last _two_ days to wreck an Amazon. Why _two_ days,
unless it was the quarrel between her husband and her son that worried
her all of yesterday?"

"Oh, heavens! You're worse than a dictaphone!" Miss Ocky made a face
at him. "There's no help for it--I must go into a silence."

"Please don't, until I've asked one more thing. You can answer freely,
or the station master will. If Copley went to town last night, what
trains were available?"

"Only one," she admitted slowly. "There's a through train from the
West that stops at Hambleton for water--at midnight!"

"Ah," said Peter Creighton, then wished he hadn't.

A high-tempered youth--a pig-headed father--a balked romance--a
quarrel--a murder at eleven and a train away at midnight. These facts
paraded through Creighton's brain and to a certain extent got ready to
parade right on out of it. He could think all around a given subject,
as he had described the process to Jason Bolt, and he was no fool to
commit himself to half-baked hypotheses. Any theory of Copley's guilt
could be countered with the same objection he made to Krech's hasty
indictment of Mrs. Varr; a boy like that might strike down a man in the
heat of passion but he would hardly set himself to calculated
murder--or if he did, he would certainly arrange a better finish than a
clumsy attempt at flight.

He became aware that Miss Copley was watching him anxiously while he
meditated. He met her eyes--very nice eyes they were, he
reflected--