if he had been sympathetic. I don't know, though," he
added anxiously. "I had to consider your position all along. If my story
was disbelieved it only made it worse for you. If it was not Thalassa, who
could it have been? Have you any idea--the faintest suspicion?"

Again she shook her head. She made an effort to look at him, but there
were tears in her eyes for the first time. His hand was resting on the
table, and she touched it gently with her fingers.

"We must find out." He spoke loudly, as if with the idea that a firm
utterance lessened the tremendous difficulty of that performance.

"What can we do?" Her tone was hopeless enough.

"Let me think." He fiddled with the planchette on the table as though he
had some notion of invoking the shade of Robert Turold to answer the
question. "Had your father any enemy? Did he fear anybody?"

She raised thoughtful eyes to his in reply.

"My father feared nobody," she said, "at least, I do not think so. Nobody
had any real influence over him except Thalassa."

"What sort of an influence?"

"It is difficult to describe," she hesitatingly answered. "Thalassa could
take liberties which nobody else would have dared. He used to go into his
room at any time. Sometimes I have awakened late at night and heard the
murmur of their voices coming from my father's study."

"Anything else?" he said, looking at her keenly.

"There was never any question of Thalassa leaving us," she went on.
"Wherever we went, and we were always going to some fresh part of England
about the title, Thalassa went also. Perhaps it was because he had known
him for so long that my father allowed Thalassa to do things which nobody
else could do. Thalassa used to sneer about the title, and say no good
would come of it. They had a quarrel once, long, long ago. I was a very
little girl at the time, and I can just remember it," she added dreamily.

She was apparently unconscious of the significance of these revelations,
but they made a deep impression upon Charles. There was something
expectant and cruel in his face as he listened--the aroused instinct of
the hunter. He addressed her--

"This bears out what I have believed all along. Thalassa knows about the
murder. He is mixed up in it in some way."

"Oh, why do you think that?" she exclaimed, clasping her hand in distress.

"Why?" he echoed. "Because your father was not the man to stand insolence
from Thalassa or anybody else unless he had to. Thalassa