entanglement known to the club gossips or the
people of the neighbourhood between Lord Loudwater and a lady in London.
It was not unlikely that he had talked of it to some one, for if they
quarrelled so furiously he must need sympathy; and if he had not talked,
the lady probably had, though it might very well be that she was not in
the circle in which the Loudwaters moved in London. He had some doubt,
however, that she was a London woman at all. She had shown too intimate a
knowledge of Lord Loudwater's habits at Loudwater and of the Castle
itself, for it was clear from William Roper's story that she had gone
straight to the library window and through it, in the evident expectation
of finding Lord Loudwater asleep as usual in his smoking-room. It was
this doubt which prevented him from appealing to Scotland Yard for help
in clearing up this particular point. He wished to make sure first that
the woman did not belong to the neighbourhood. On the other hand, she
might always be some one who had been a guest at the Castle.

He was about to go in search of Lady Loudwater to question her about
their friends and acquaintances who might have this knowledge of the
Castle and the habits of her husband, when the sleuth from the _Wire_ and
the sleuth from the _Planet_ arrived together, in all amity and the same
vexation at being prevented by this errand from spending the afternoon at
the same bridge table. The sleuth of the _Wire_ was a very solemn-looking
young man, with a round, simple face. The sleuth of the _Planet_ was a
tall, dark man, with an impatient and slightly worried air, who looked
uncommonly like an irritable actor-manager.

Both of them greeted Mr. Flexen with affectionate warmth, and Douglas,
the tall sleuth of the _Planet_, at once deplored, with considerable
bitterness, the fact that he had been robbed of his afternoon's bridge.
Gregg, the sleuth of the _Wire_, preserved a gently-blinking,
sympathetic silence.

Mr. Flexen at once sent for whisky, soda and cigars, and over them took
his two friends into his confidence. He told them that it was very
doubtful whether it was a case of murder or suicide; that the jury's
verdict was not in accordance with the directions of the Coroner, but
just a piece of natural, pig-headed stupidity. This produced another
bitter outcry from Douglas about the loss of his afternoon. Mr. Flexen
did not soothe him at all by pointing out that he was in a beautiful
country on a beautif