Mr. Tertius went slowly homeward, head bent and eyes moody. He let himself into the house; at the sound of his step in the hall Peggie Wynne looked out of the study. She retreated into it at sight of Mr. Tertius, and he followed her and closed the door. Looking narrowly at her, he saw that the girl had been shedding tears, and he laid his hand shyly yet sympathetically on her arm. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I’ve been feeling like that ever since—since I heard about things. But I don’t know—I suppose we shall feel it more when—when we realize it more, eh? Just now there’s the other thing to think about, isn’t there?”
Peggie mopped her eyes and looked at him. He was such a quiet, unobtrusive, inoffensive old gentleman that she wondered more than ever why Barthorpe had refused to admit him to the informal conference.
“What other thing?” she asked.
Mr. Tertius looked round the room—strangely empty now that Jacob Herapath’s bustling and strenuous presence was no longer in it—and shook his head.
“There’s one thought you mustn’t permit yourself to harbour for a moment, my dear,” he answered. “Don’t even for a fraction of time allow yourself to think that my old friend took his own life! That’s—impossible.”
“I don’t,” said Peggie. “I never did think so. It is, as you say, impossible. I knew him too well to believe that. So, of course, it’s——”
“Murder,” assented Mr. Tertius. “Murder! I heard a man in the street voice the same opinion just now. Of course! It’s the only opinion. Yet in the newspaper they’re asking which it was. But I suppose the newspapers must be—sensational.”
“You don’t mean to say it’s in the newspapers already?” exclaimed Peggie.
Mr. Tertius handed to her the Argus special, which he had carried crumpled up in his hand.
“Everybody’s reading it out there in the streets,” he said. “It’s extraordinary, now, how these affairs seem to fascinate people. Yes—it’s all there. That is, of course, as far as it’s gone.”