"You don't mean to tell me," she exclaimed, with a sudden light in her eyes, "that you, my well-behaved Andrew, have been playing around? You are not going to be a corespondent or any-thing of that sort?"
"I used the word 'political,'" he reminded her coldly. "You would not understand the situation, but its interest and my danger centres round a certain document which was stolen from my study at Martinhoe on or just before the day of my arrival from London last August."
"How dull!" she murmured.
"That document," he went on, "was purloined by Anthony Palliser from the safe in my study. It was either upon him when he disappeared, or he disposed of it on the afternoon of my arrival to a political opponent of mine—James Miller."
"I had so hoped there was a lady in the case," she yawned.
"If you will give me your attention for one moment longer," he begged, "it will be all I ask. I want you to tell me, first of all, whether James Miller called at the Manor that afternoon and saw Palliser, whether any one called who might have been helping him, or—"
"Well?"
"Whether you have heard anything of Palliser since his disappearance?"
She looked at him hardly.
"You have brought me here to answer these questions?"