"Putting himself right with Miss Manning? What the deuce do you mean, sir?" Fenley could snarl effectively when in the mood, and none might deny his present state of irritation, be the cause what it might.
"That young lady is the only person to whom he owes an explanation. He is giving it to her now."
"Will you kindly be more explicit?"
Furneaux glanced from his infuriated questioner to Winter, his face one note of mild interrogation and non-comprehension.
"Really, Mr. Fenley, I have said the same thing in two different ways," he cried. "As a rule I contrive to be tolerably lucid in my remarks—don't I, Mr. Robert?" for the younger Fenley had just come in.
"What's up now?" was Robert's non-committal answer.
For some reason his brother did not reply, but Furneaux suddenly grew voluble.
"Of course, you haven't heard that an artist named Trenholme was painting near the lake this morning when your father was killed," he said. "Fortunately, he was there before and after the shot was fired. He can prove, almost to a yard, the locality where the murderer was concealed. In fact, he is coming here tomorrow, at my request, to go over the ground with me.
"An interesting feature of the affair is that Mr. Trenholme is a genius. I have never seen better work. One of his drawings, a water color, has all the brilliancy and light of a David Cox, but another, in oil, is a positive masterpiece. It must have been done in a few minutes, because Miss Manning did not know he was sitting beneath the cedars, and it is unreasonable to suppose that she would preserve the same pose for any length of time—sufficiently long, that is——"
"Did the bounder paint a picture of Sylvia bathing?" broke in Robert, his red face purple with rage.