end me a wire to Scotland Yard."

CHAPTER XIX

It was from Mrs. Pendleton that Mr. Brimsdown gained his first real
knowledge of the drama of strange events surrounding Robert Turold's
death. In response to his call at the hotel she came down from her room
fingering his card nervously, her eyes reddened with weeping, and an air
of tremulous bewilderment about her which sat ill on her massive
personality.

The lawyer greeted her with formal courtesy. He was newly shaved and
bathed, his linen was spotless, and his elderly grey eyes looked out with
alert watchfulness on a world of trickery.

"As your late brother's legal adviser for many years, I felt it incumbent
upon me to come down," he said, fixing a grave glance on the distracted
lady before him. "It seemed to me that I might be of some use, perhaps,
assistance. That is the object of my call."

The fact that she had not seen Mr. Brimsdown before did not lessen the
hysterical gratitude with which Mrs. Pendleton received this piece of
information. The events of the last forty-eight hours had shaken her
badly. Her brother's tragic death, and the terrible suspicion which
enveloped Sisily, had stripped her of her strength, and left her with a
feminine longing to cast her burden on a man's shoulders. She had
discovered to her dismay that a husband who has been snubbed and kept
under for twenty years is apt to prove a thing of straw when a woman likes
to feel that the male sex was devised by Providence to take the wheel from
female hands if the barque of life drifts on the breakers. But Mr.
Pendleton had revealed no latent capacity to play the part of the strong
man at the helm in the crisis. He had shown himself a craven and kept out
of the way, leaving his wife to her own resources. The appearance of Mr.
Brimsdown was as timely to her as the arrival of a heaven-sent pilot in a
storm.

"Thank you," she murmured incoherently. "Such a dreadful end. Poor dear
Robert." She sobbed into her handkerchief.

"A deplorable loss to his family--and England," assented the lawyer. "I am
glad to see you. They ascertained your address for me at the hotel where I
am staying. I have been resting after travelling all night, and I shall go
and see the police in the morning. So far I have only read the reports in
the London evening papers, and there may be intimate particulars which
were not disclosed to the press. If such exist, perhaps you will impart
them to me. You need not h