"You think he's insane then?"
Mark received the question with a stare of astonishment. "Insane!" he repeated. "Why, what the devil else can he be?"
"You have seen him yourself," persisted Colin. "Did you notice anything the least queer about him?"
Mark paused. "No," he said slowly. "Now you come to mention it, I'm hanged if I did."
"Nor I," was Colin's rejoinder. "I quite agree with you that he ought to be shut up, only I think it's Dartmoor and not Broadmoor."
"But, hang it all," broke in Mark, "a sane man doesn't try to have a perfect stranger murdered just because he's a little sore at being turned down by a girl."
"He doesn't," admitted Colin. "There must be some other reason that we know nothing about, and that's why I'm going to turn the whole thing over to Marsden. If I thought that it was merely a personal matter between him and me I'd go round and knock the stuffing out of him myself."
Mark replaced his spectacles with an air of bewilderment that was almost comic.
"The more one thinks over it," he said, "the more incomprehensible it seems. For one thing, why should he connect you with Nancy at all? You have only seen each other about three times."
There was a pause.