, Berks,
on a charge of murder, had shocked Mr. Oakham deeply. Divorces had come
his way in plenty, though he remembered the day when they were
considered scandalous in good families. But the modern generation had
changed all that, and Mr. Oakham had since listened to so many stories
of marital wrongs, and had assisted in obtaining so many orders for
restitution of conjugal rights, that he had come to regard divorce as
fashionable enough to be respectable. He was intimately versed in most
human failings and follies, and a past master in preventing their
consequences coming to light. Financial embarrassments he was well used
to--they might almost be said to be his forte--for many of his clients
had more lineage than money, but the crime of murder was a thing outside
his professional experience.

The upper classes of the present generation had, in this respect at
least, improved on the morals of their freebooting ancestors, and murder
had gone so completely out of fashion among the aristocracy that Mr.
Oakham had never been called upon to prepare the defence of a client
charged with killing a fellow creature. Mr. Oakham regarded murder as an
ungentlemanly crime. He believed that no gentleman would commit murder
unless he were mad. Since his arrival in Norfolk he had come to the
conclusion that young Penreath was not only mad, but that he had
committed the murder with which he stood charged. Sir Henry Durwood had
been responsible for the first opinion, and the police had helped him to
form the second. Two interviews he had had with his client since his
arrest had strengthened and deepened both convictions.

It was in this frame of mind that Mr. Oakham seated himself in the
detective's sitting room. He accepted a cigar from Colwyn's case, and
looked amiably at his companion, who waited for him to speak. The
interview had been of the solicitor's seeking, and it was for him to
disclose his object in doing so.

"This is a very unfortunate case, Mr. Colwyn," the solicitor remarked.

"Yes; it seems so," replied Colwyn.

"I am afraid there is not the slightest doubt that this unhappy young
man has committed this murder."

"You have arrived at that conclusion?"

"It is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion, in view of the
evidence."

"It is purely circumstantial. I thought that perhaps Penreath would have
some statement to make which would throw a different light on the case."

"I will be frank with you, Mr. Colw