"And yet," he said thoughtfully, "she would necessarily be involved in any disclosures which were made."

"And so should I," Wrayson declared. "And those two, Sydney Barnes and Heneage, mean to bring about disclosures. That is why I felt that I must talk to some one about this. Colonel, can't you get your daughter to tell us the whole truth—what she was doing in Barnes' flat that night, and all the rest of it? We should be forewarned then!"

The Colonel covered his face with his hand for a moment. The question obviously distressed him.

"I can't, Herbert," he said, in a low tone. "You would scarcely think, would you, that I was the sort of man to live on irreconcilable terms with one of my own family? But there it is. Don't think hardly of her. It is more the fault of circumstances than her fault. But I couldn't go to see her—and she wouldn't come to see me."

Wrayson sighed.

"It is like the rest of this cursed mystery, utterly incomprehensible," he declared. "I shall never—"

With his glass half raised to his lips, he paused suddenly in his sentence. His face became a study in the expression of a boundless amazement. His eyes were fastened upon the figures of two people on their way up the room, preceded by the smiling maître d'hôtel. Some words, or rather an exclamation, broke incoherently from his lips. He set down his glass hurriedly, and a stain of red wine crept unheeded across the tablecloth.

"Look," he whispered hoarsely,—"look!"

CHAPTER XVII
A CONFESSION OF LOVE

The Colonel turned bodily round in his chair. The couple to whom Wrayson had drawn his attention were certainly incongruous enough to attract notice anywhere. The man was lank, elderly, and of severe appearance. He was bald, he had slight side-whiskers, he wore spectacles, and his face was devoid of expression. He was dressed in plain dinner clothes of old-fashioned cut. The tails of his coat were much too short, his collar belonged to a departed generation, and his tie was ready made. In a small Scotch town he might have passed muster readily enough as the clergyman or lawyer of the place. As a diner at Luigi's, ushered up the room to the soft strains of "La Mattchiche," and followed by such a companion, he was almost ridiculously out of place. If anything, she was the more noticeable of the two to the casual observer. Her hair was dazzlingly yellow, and arranged with all the stiffness of the coiffeur's art. She wore a dress of black sequins, cut perilously low, and shorn a little by wear of its pristine splendour. Her complexion was as artificial as her high-pitched voice; her very presence seemed to exude perfumes of the patchouli type. She was the sort of person concerning whom the veriest novice in such matters could have made no mistake. Yet her companion seemed wholly unembarrassed. He handed her the menu and looked calmly around the room.