Both men arose to their feet and looked at one another, and so absorbed were they that they did not hear the door softly open behind them.
"Not yet, Lord Calliston," said Dowker calmly. "I want to know what you did those two hours you were in the fog."
"Do! nothing, except walk about looking for the woman I thought Lena Sarschine."
"And you found her?"
"No."
"Bah! what jury would believe that?"
"Do you mean to accuse me of this murder?" asked Calliston furiously, clenching his fists.
"I accuse you of nothing," retorted Dowker coolly. "I merely put a case to you--here is a man, yourself, going to run off with another woman, when his mistress, as he thinks, comes to stop him--he sees her leave his chambers in a furious rage, follows her--what is more natural than that he should meet her, and she heaps reproaches on him----"
"Wait a minute," interrupted Calliston with a sneer, "your picture is very tragic but quite wrong. Suppose I did meet the woman who left my chambers, I would find not Lena Sarschine but Lady Balscombe, the very woman I wanted to meet."
Dowker rubbed his head, being for once in his life nonplussed by a man as clever as himself.