u seem unusually thoughtful, Fetherston," remarked Trendall with some
curiosity, as he seated himself at the table and resumed the opening of
his letters which his friend's visit had interrupted. "What's the
matter?"

"The fact is, I'm very much puzzled."

"About what? You're generally very successful in obtaining solutions
where other men have failed."

"To the problem which is greatly exercising my mind just now I can obtain
no solution," he said in a low, intense voice.

"What is it? Can I help you?"

"Well," he exclaimed, with some hesitation, "I am still trying to
discover why Harry Bellairs died and who killed him."

"That mystery has long ago been placed by us among those which admit of
no solution, my dear fellow," declared his friend. "We did our best to
throw some light upon it, but all to no purpose. I set the whole of our
machinery at work at the time--days before you suspected anything
wrong--but not a trace of the truth could we find."

"But what could have been the motive, do you imagine? From all accounts
he was a most popular young officer, without a single enemy in the
world."

"Jealousy," was the dark man's slow reply. "My own idea is that a woman
killed him."

"Why?" cried Walter quickly. "What causes you to make such a suggestion?"

"Well--listen, and when I've finished you can draw your own
conclusions."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SILENCE OF THE MAN BARKER

"HARRY BELLAIRS was an old friend of mine," Trendall went on, leaning
back in his padded writing-chair and turning towards where the novelist
was standing. "His curious end was a problem which, of course, attracted
you as a writer of fiction. The world believed his death to be due to
natural causes, in view of the failure of Professors Dale and Boyd, the
Home Office analysts, to find a trace of poison or of foul play."

"You believe, then, that he was poisoned?" asked Fetherston quickly.

The other shrugged his shoulders, saying: "How can that point be cleared
up? There was no evidence of it."

"It is curious that, though we are both so intensely interested in the
problem, we have never before discussed it," remarked Walter. "I am so
anxious to hear your views upon one or two points. What, for instance, do
you think of Barker, the dead man's valet?"

Herbert Trendall hesitated, and for a moment twisted his moustache. He
was a marvellously alert man, an unusually good linguist, and a
cosmopolitan to his finger-tips. He had