upon his silence. I mean,
Jack, what can he possibly have to conceal?"

Temporarily I felt myself to have become tongue-tied. What _could_ it
be that Coverly was concealing? The idea of complicity in the crime I
scouted; nothing could have induced me to believe it. Only one
explanation presented itself to my mind, as evidently it had presented
itself to Isobel's--another woman. However:

"You may depend," I said, endeavoring to speak soothingly, "that he
has some good and sufficient reason for this silence, and one which is
not in any way discreditable. Nevertheless he will have to reconsider
his attitude in the near future. Of course there are times when almost
every one of us would be hard put to it to establish an alibi if we
were called upon to do so--as regards witnesses of our movements, I
mean; but at least we can state roughly where we were during any hour
of the day, even if we have to trust to luck to find witnesses to
prove the truth of words. His attitude of silence, Isobel, is
ridiculous."

"Have you seen the evening papers?" she asked pathetically.

"Some of them," I replied.

"They have got my name in already," she continued, "and my photograph
appears in one. It is outrageous how they leap at an opportunity for
scandal."

"It will all be cleared up," I said, speaking with as much confidence
as I had at my command. "You know and I know that Coverly is innocent
and I don't believe that Gatton thinks him guilty."

A while longer we talked and then I returned rather wearily to my
chair in the room where the air was still laden with tobacco fumes.

Without believing it to contain any very special significance as I had
supposed, but merely attracted by the strangeness of the passage, I
remembered how Gatton had harped upon Maspero's description of the
attributes of Bast. "Sometimes she plays with her victim as with a
mouse," etc. The big book with its fine plates, several of them
representing cats similar to that which Gatton had left behind for my
more particular examination, still lay open upon the table, and I
reread those passages appertaining to the character of the
cat-goddess, which I had marked for Gatton's information. Scarce
noting what I read--for all the time I was turning over in my mind the
manifold problems of the case--I sat there for an hour perhaps, in
fact until I was interrupted by the entrance of Coates.

"Shall you require me again to-night, sir?" he inquired.

"No," I repli