had maintained his judicial attitude, as if he
were on the bench and listening to the opening statements of counsel.

"Are you suggesting, all of you that you think Miss Pett murdered
Kitely?" he asked. "I should like a direct answer to that question."

"My dear sir!" exclaimed Carfax. "What does it look like? You've heard
the woman's record! The probability is that she did murder that
Eurasian, girl--that she took advantage of Stilman's use of drugs to
finish him off. She certainly benefited by Stilman's death--and she's
without doubt benefited by Kitely's. I repeat--what does it look like?"

"What do you propose to do?" asked Brereton.

The inquiry agents glanced at each other and then at Carfax. And Carfax
slowly took off his spectacles with a flourish, and looked more judicial
than ever as he answered the young barrister's question.

"I will tell you what I propose to do," he replied. "I propose to take
these two men over to Highmarket this evening and to let them tell the
Highmarket police all they have just told you!"

CHAPTER XXIX

WITHOUT THOUGHT OF CONSEQUENCE

Everything was very quiet in the house where Mallalieu lay wide-awake
and watchful. It seemed to him that he had never known it so quiet
before. It was quiet at all times, both day and night, for Miss Pett had
a habit of going about like a cat, and Christopher was decidedly of the
soft-footed order, and stepped from one room to another as if he were
perpetually afraid of waking somebody or trusting his own weight on his
own toes. But on this particular night the silence seemed to be
unusual--and it was all the deeper because no sound, not even the faint
sighing of the wind in the firs and pines outside came to break it. And
Mallalieu's nerves, which had gradually become sharpened and irritated
by his recent adventures and his close confinement, became still more
irritable, still more set on edge, and it was with difficulty that he
forced himself to lie still and to listen. Moreover, he was feeling the
want of the stuff which had soothed him into such sound slumber every
night since he had been taken in charge by Miss Pett, and he knew very
well that though he had flung it away his whole system was crying out
for the lack of it.

What were those two devils after, he wondered as he lay there in the
darkness? No good--that was certain. Now that he came to reflect upon it
their conduct during the afternoon and evening had not been of a
reas