"Well?" said O'Rane.
I put my arm through his and walked towards the river.
"I'm prepared to bet that the last time Beresford saw your wife was when I spoiled their tête-à-tête in his rooms," I said. "He doesn't know I've told you already and he's in dread that I'm going to. Didn't you feel that? And it's not that he's afraid of you—I don't think he's physically afraid of anyone;—he doesn't want you to know that she was foolish enough to come to his rooms at such an hour."
O'Rane disengaged his arm and rested his elbows on the parapet and his chin on his hands.
"This was three weeks—before?" he asked.
"I don't believe he's met her since. I don't believe it was him."
He shook his head slowly.
"I couldn't see him, of course; I've told you I didn't get near enough to touch him, but I heard him going across the room and down the stairs on one leg. You aren't in a mood then to weigh your suspicions very judicially.... I taxed Sonia with it. My God! I can't go through it again, we were both of us out of our minds, I don't know what we said! But I assumed it was Beresford—I remember I kept on using his name. She never denied it. If it wasn't Beresford ...?"
"Let's first of all establish whether it was Beresford," I suggested.
He hesitated a moment longer and then pulled himself abruptly erect, took my arm and walked quickly back to the house. Bertrand and George, a pair of strangely disreputable figures, were dozing in arm-chairs; Beresford had his eyes open and fixed on us the moment we were inside the room.