there was silence. Furneaux seemed to be satisfied that he was
following a blind alley, and Winter became the inquisitor.

"What is the name of the woman with whom your brother is mixed up?"

"I can not tell you, but my father knew."

"What leads you to form that opinion?"

"Some words that passed between Bob and him last Saturday morning."

"Where? Here?"

"Yes, in the hall. Tomlinson heard more distinctly than I. I saw there
was trouble brewing, and kept out of it--hung back, on the pretense
of reading a newspaper."

"As to the missing rifle--can you help us there?"

"Not in the least. I wish to Heaven Bob had gone to Africa, as he was
planning. Then all this misery would have been avoided."

"Do you mean your father's death?"

Fenley started. He had not weighed his words.

"Oh, no, no!" he cried hurriedly. "Don't try to trip me into
admissions, Mr. Winter. I can't stand that, damned if I can."

He jumped up, went to the sideboard and mixed himself a weak brandy
and soda, which he swallowed as if his throat were afire with thirst.

"I am not treating you as a hostile witness, sir," answered Winter
calmly. "Mr. Furneaux and I are merely clearing the ground. Soon we
shall know, or believe that we know, what line to avoid and what to
follow."

"Is Miss Sylvia Manning engaged to be married?" put in Furneaux.
Fenley gave him a fiendish look.

"What the devil has Miss Manning's matrimonial prospects got to do
with this inquiry?" he said, and the venom in his tone was hardly to
be accounted for by Furneaux's harmless-sounding query.

"One never knows," said the little man, taking the unexpected attack
with bland indifference. "You don't appreciate our position in this
matter. We are not judges, but guessers. We sit in the stalls of a
theater, watching people on the stage of real life playing four acts
of a tragedy, and it is our business to construct the fifth, which is
produced in court. Let me give you a wildly supposititious version of
that fifth act now. Suppose some neurotic fool was in love with Miss
Manning, or her money, and Mr. Mortimer Fenley opposed the project.
That would supply a motive for the murder. Do you take the point?"

"I'm sorry I blazed out at you. Miss Manning is not engaged to be
married, nor likely to be for many a day."

Now, the obvious question was, "Why, she being such an attractive
young lady?" But Furneaux never put obvious questions. He turned to
Winter with the air of o