know that I have not told you, Ruth?" he
asked.

"Tell me what happened to you last night!"

He laughed boisterously, but with a flagrant note of insincerity.

"Haven't I been telling you all the time?"

"You've kept something back," she panted, gripping his fingers
frantically, "the greatest thing. Speak about it. Anything is better
than this silence. Don't you remember your promise before you
went--you would tell me everything--everything! Well?"

Her words pierced the armor of his own self-deceit. The bare room
seemed suddenly full of glowing images of Fenella. His face was
transfigured.

"I haven't told you very much about Mrs. Weatherley," he said,
simply. "She is very wonderful and very beautiful. She was very kind
to me, too."

Ruth leaned forward in her chair; her eyes read what she strove yet
hated to see. She threw herself suddenly back, covering her face
with her hands. The strain was over. She began to weep.

CHAPTER X

AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

Mr. Weatherley laid down his newspaper with a grunt. He was alone in
his private office with his newly appointed secretary.

"Two whole days gone already and they've never caught that fellow!"
he exclaimed. "They don't seem to have a clue, even."

Arnold looked up from some papers upon which he was engaged.

"We can't be absolutely sure of that, sir," he reminded his
employer. "They wouldn't give everything away to the Press."

Mr. Weatherley threw the newspaper which he had been reading onto
the floor, and struck the table with his fist.

"The whole affair," he declared, "is scandalous--perfectly
scandalous. The police system of this country is ridiculously
inadequate. Scotland Yard ought to be thoroughly overhauled. Some
one should take the matter up--one of the ha'penny papers on the
lookout for a sensation might manage it. Just see here what
happens," he went on earnestly. "A man is murdered in cold blood in
a fashionable restaurant. The murderer simply walks out of the
place into the street and no one hears of him again. He can't have
been swallowed up, can he? You were there, Chetwode. What do you
think of it?"

Arnold, who had been thinking of little else for the last few days,
shook his head.

"I don't know what to think, sir," he admitted, "except that the
murderer up till now has been extraordinarily lucky."

"Either that or he was fiendishly clever," Mr. Weatherley agreed,
pulling nervously at his little patch of gray sidewhi