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It was one of those chilly mornings that come sometimes in early autumn. The white mist from the park seemed to rise like a pall right up to the window of the morning-room at Heron's Carew; a bright fire burned in the grate, making the weather outside look more damp and cheerless by contrast. Lady Carew was leaning back in her favourite low reclining chair near the fire-place; Sir Anthony was standing on the hearthrug. The front door bell rang, their eyes met in a smile of perfect confidence. Then Judith began to shiver.

"Oh, Anthony, I am frightened! Do you think they really know who shot Cyril? I don't see how they can I—Suppose—suppose they are only trying to make us incriminate ourselves?"

Sir Anthony's face was a little overclouded. "I can't tell, dear. But I feel inclined to trust Inspector Furnival, and he tells me that if we speak out we have nothing to fear. Anyhow, the truth must be the best policy, and, at any rate, we both know that the worst dread of all that has haunted each of us these past terrible months has been only a delusion; don't we, Judith?"

"Yes, yes!" she whispered, looking up at him with dewy eyes. "Oh, Anthony! How could I have been so foolish?"

He caught his breath. "You couldn't help it. How I—" He broke off as three men were ushered into the room: Stephen Crasster, Inspector Furnival, and Mr. Lawrence.

Sir Anthony greeted them all courteously, and invited them to be seated.

"Lady Carew and I have decided to take your advice," he began, addressing Furnival. "We will tell you our story—our stories, rather—without any reservation. And, if you can find any loophole to help us; I am sure we need not assure you of our boundless gratitude. I think we are all here now—except Mrs. Rankin. Ah, here she is!" He opened the door.

Mrs. Rankin's comely face was pale and anxious. She went over and took the seat Sir Anthony drew up for her, near Lady Carew, and clasped Judith's hand in hers. Crasster stood by Sir Anthony on the hearthrug. Furnival and Lawrence occupied seats nearer the door, placed so that they had a good view of the faces of the other three.

"If Lady Carew will begin—" Furnival said, glancing at Sir Anthony.

The firelight gleamed on Judith's delicate face, shone on the masses of pale gold hair, gave for a moment a fictitious colour to the transparent skin. She drew herself up among her cushions, bracing herself for the ordeal that awaited her. Her fingers caught convulsively at Mrs. Rankin's hand, her eyes sought Anthony's. It was to him she was telling the tale, it was to him that she must vindicate herself! Her voice was very low and trembling when she began, it gathered strength as she went on.

"I was very young when I married Cyril Stanmore, entirely in ignorance of his real character, and so friendless that I had no one to warn me that he was only a professional gambler. Our quarrels arose from the fact that when I did discover how his money was obtained I refused to help him to be a party to his schemes.

"Everything culminated on the night he told me I had never been his wife at all, that our marriage had been illegal. That night I left him for ever. Chance had made me acquainted with Canon Rankin. I knew his kindly character. I told him my miserable story, and appealed to him for help. He took me to his own home, placed me in Mrs. Rankin's care, and promised to find me work.

"Finally he suggested that I should act as his daughter's governess until I had had time to live down the past, to obtain a satisfactory reference for the future. How kind both he and Mrs. Rankin were to me in that terrible time no words of mine could ever tell! Finally, when there was no more work for me with them, they procured me an engagement at Heron's Carew. When I was going to marry Sir Anthony Carew, I did not tell them, because I knew that they would want me to tell him the secret of the past, and I couldn't—I couldn't put my happiness away from me with my own hands. I had heard, as I believed, of Cyril Stanmore's death before I left Canon Rankin's, therefore, his sudden appearance on the steps of St. Peter's, was a double shock to me. When he ordered me to come to his flat I was too bewildered to know what I ought to do—too overwhelmed to do anything but obey. When I got there—I had taken my husband's pistol to protect myself with—he, Stanmore, mocked at me, took it from me, and threw it down. Then I rubbed against the switch, and put out the electric light. In the darkness a shot was fired, I heard a fall and a groan. It was a long time before I could find the switch, but I could hear some one in the room, some one breathing heavily—"

She paused and drank feverishly some water that Mrs. Rankin handed to her. Then with a shuddering glance round the circle of expectant faces, she went on.

"When I did find the light," she whispered, "there was no one there but Cyril Stanmore and myself. When I saw that he was dead I was too terrified to do anything, or give the alarm. No one would believe me, I thought; everybody would think I had shot him. I hurried away."

Her voice sank into silence.

Inspector Furnival had been busy making notes in his pocket-book; he looked up now.

"You were not alone when you left the block of flats, Lady Carew; a man came down the stairs with you?" he paused suggestively.

Judith looked at him with wide-open, amazed eyes. "You know that too. But he—I met him on the stairs outside the flat; he had known me in the old time—and he turned with me and walked with me to the entrance."

A spasm of fear that momentarily contorted her face, that caught her throat, making her voice husky and dry, did not escape the sharp-witted inspector's notice.

"Will you tell us his name, Lady Carew. Can you say why, when the police were searching high and low to discover the identity of the visitor to the flat, he did not come forward to say he had met you?"

There was a long pause. Judith's eyes turned about from side to side. The inspector waited, holding his pencil pointed over his notebook. Mrs. Rankin's mouth quivered painfully as she chafed the cold hand she held. At last Lady Carew spoke.

"I suppose he was sorry for me!" she said faintly. "He had been a great friend of Stanmore's in the old time. I—I used to think then that he made Stanmore worse, that he was his evil genius, but perhaps—when he knew what had happened that night—he was sorry for me!"

"His name?" the inspector questioned, writing rapidly.

Judith hesitated again; she put up her handkerchief to her lips, she glanced across at Anthony. He was not looking at her.

"I—I knew him as Jermyn Leigh," she stammered at last.

"And you parted from him at the entrance to the flats, you say?" the inspector went on quickly. "You must pardon my putting these questions, Lady Carew; if this tangle is ever to be straightened out, we must have the truth and the whole truth now. Have you ever seen this man—Jermyn Leigh—since he left you that night?"

"Y—es!" the word fell across the listening silence.

Sir Anthony stood perfectly motionless. Crasster gave a quick inaudible exclamation as he leaned forward.

The inspector waited. "Where?" he questioned at last. "In London, or since you came down to Heron's Carew?"

"Since we came down to Heron's Carew!" She seemed to repeat his words mechanically. "Yes, yes, he is here, though I never thought—I never dreamt of such a thing till I saw him—" Her voice failed her; she caught her breath.

"Ah, yes," the inspector assented. "The name by which he is known here, please."

Judith looked at him; for a minute her lips seemed to move inaudibly.

"He is Lord Chesterham."

"Chesterham!" The exclamation burst from Crasster.

Sir Anthony did not stir; Mrs. Rankin, as if moved by some sudden impulse of pity, leaned forward and kissed Judith's pale cheek.

A little satisfied smile played round the inspector's mouth as he made another entry in his book.

"He would recognize you when he met you down here of course?"

"Oh yes, yes; he knew me!" Judith said faintly. "He promised to keep silence if—if I would not try to stop his marriage," she went on feverishly. "But now—now I can't any longer."

"Thank you, I think that is all for the present." The inspector wore a curiously triumphant expression as he looked up. "Sir Anthony, will you gives us your help? Please tell us what you know of the night's doings."

Sir Anthony glanced up.

"It is so; little I know, as I told you, inspector. I picked up a paper that Lady Carew dropped, having on it Warden's address, and the hour at which she was to be at the flat. Sometimes now, it seems to me, looking back, that the very suspicion that my wife had made an appointment with another man drove me mad. I went to the flats at the time named; I waited in a doorway opposite, and I saw my wife go in, and come out again after some time. Then I went in. A man was standing in the vestibule; it struck me that he was watching Lady Carew, he was smiling to himself as he looked after her, but I had only a very cursory glimpse of him. I went up to the flat, but, of course, I could not get in. Of the tragedy itself I know nothing."

"Did you recognize Chesterham as the man who was standing in the vestibule watching Lady Carew?" Crasster asked eagerly. It was the first time he had spoken.

Sir Anthony shook his head.

"I cannot say that I did, though I have sometimes felt that his face was vaguely familiar. But as I say, it was only a glimpse I had of him that night. Can we help you any further, inspector?"

"A little, I think, sir." Inspector Furnival drew a paper from his pocket and studied it in silence for a minute or two. "If Lady Carew will kindly answer a few questions? The dress you wore that night has been placed in the hands of the police by your late maid, Célestine, Lady Carew. There are splashes of blood on the bodice that must have come from the murdered man and the skirt is stained with ink. How do you account for this?"

"I—I tried to raise him—Stanmore—in my arms," Judith faltered. Her voice wavered and broke. The very effort of speaking of it brought back the whole terrible scene before her eyes. "And—and—when he threw the pistol on the table he upset the inkstand; I tried to get it back; that is how the ink must have got on my dress."

"Ah! The ink was on the table with the pistol," the inspector commented with a far-away look in his eyes. "One more question, Lady Carew. There was a blue star on Stanmore's wrist." Judith bent her head in assent. "Were you aware that there was a similar mark on the wrist of the man whom you knew as Jermyn Leigh?"

Judith's face grew strangely white, her eyes glanced obliquely round as though oppressed by some horrible fear.

"I—I never saw one—I did not think he had one." A hoarse sob rose in her throat.

The inspector went on apparently scrawling hieroglyphics in his pocket-book. Lawrence and Crasster knew that his look, his very silence, betokened that he was satisfied.

Nobody spoke for a minute or two, as if by common consent. Every one avoided looking at the agonized face of the woman in the big chair. Lawrence glanced at Crasster, some faint foreshadowing of what was coming upon him, unreal, fantastical, as must appear the happenings it involved. Inspector Furnival glanced at Mrs. Rankin. "You have nothing more to tell us, I think?"

"No," she answered with a little catch in her breath. "Only that on Tuesday before the murder Stanmore called on us and asked us if we could tell him where Lady Carew was to be found. We declined to give him any information of course, and he went away asking us if we should hear of her later, to let him know at the Abbey Court flats, where he told us he was staying under the name of Charles Warden."

The inspector tapped his notebook thoughtfully. "Did he tell you why he was anxious to find Lady Carew?"

Mrs. Rankin shook her head.

"No further than that he said he had come back to England to claim some great inheritance that had fallen to him, and we gathered that he wished her to share it with him."

"Um! Um!" The inspectors did not speak for a minute or two, then he looked up suddenly. "Did he give you any notion of the sort of inheritance to which he had succeeded?"

"No—no," Mrs. Rankin said slowly, "further than that he spoke as if it meant rank as well as wealth. But I think he was too much excited to talk coherently, and we, of course, were only too anxious to get rid of him.

"Naturally!" the inspector assented. "Well, I don't think we need trouble you any further to-day."

Mrs. Rankin sat back in her chair with an audible sigh of relief.

Sir Anthony looked at the detective. "Can you help us, Furnival, or are we too hopelessly in the mire?"

"I think I shall be able to do something, Sir Anthony." The inspector glanced over what he had written, then he closed the book and fastened it. "But before we go any further I should suggest Lady Carew goes to her room. I am sure Mrs. Rankin will agree with me that it is the best thing for her."

"They—they do believe me, Anthony?" she said piteously, as her husband came forward and drew her arm through his.

The inspector took the answer upon himself.

"Well, I do, for one, Lady Carew," he said heartily. "And later on Sir Anthony will tell you the name of the Abbey Court murderer."

"Thank you!" Judith murmured brokenly. She felt strangely bewildered, scarcely able even to think. All she could realize was that there was hope at last, hope that the awful black cloud that had brooded over Heron's Carew for so long was going to be dissipated.

Her husband half-supported, half-carried her to her room, and then, whispering soothing words, he left her to Mrs. Rankin's care, and went back to the morning-room. The three men had their heads close together when he entered. He fancied that Crasster looked strangely disturbed.

"Excuse me, Sir Anthony," murmured the inspector. He went across to the window, and, throwing it open, put his head out with a curious whistling sound, like a bird's cry. It was answered from the bushes on the other side of the terrace. He stepped back and closed the window.

"It is all right," he observed enigmatically. "You are going to have a visitor, Sir Anthony. I hear a car in the drive."

"A visitor!" Sir Anthony stepped to the bell.

"Allow him to be admitted, please, Sir Anthony," said the inspector. "I fancy it is one whose evidence may be very germane to the case."

Sir Anthony started.

"Germane to the case! I don't see—"

"One moment, Sir Anthony!"

The inspector held up his hand.

The bell pealed loudly, they heard the old butler open the door, a murmured colloquy, then Sir Anthony's face altered.

"Chesterham! Ah, of course his testimony—"

"Will supply the missing link!" the inspector finished.

"Exactly." Sir Anthony opened the door. "Ah, Chesterham, we were just speaking of you. Come in."

Chesterham was distinctly paler than usual, his face looked anxious and worried.

"I only heard half an hour ago of the accident that happened to Lady Carew last night," he began, advancing to meet Sir Anthony. "I trust its gravity has been exaggerated. How is she? I—" He broke off as he saw the men behind Sir Anthony.

Inspector Furnival stepped forward. Sir Anthony with a puzzled expression moved aside.

"You do not disturb us, Lord Chesterham!" the inspector remarked suavely. "As Sir Anthony said, we were just speaking of you. You can supply exactly the evidence we want!"

"Evidence! I don't understand you!" Chesterham's face darkened as he spoke, and he drew back. "I came here to speak to Sir Anthony Carew," he added with an assumption of hauteur that brought a slight smile to the inspector's lips.

At the same time there was a knock at the front door. Furnival signed to the butler to open it. A couple of men in dark clothes entered and stood on the mat. As soon as they were fairly inside, the inspector advanced towards the astonished Chesterham.

"Ronald Lee, alias Jermyn Leigh, alias Viscount Chesterham, I arrest you for the wilful murder of Cyril Stanmore, Lord Chesterham, at the Abbey Court flats on the night of April — 19—. And it is my duty to warn you that anything you say in answer to the charge will be taken down in writing and may be used against you."

He drew his hand from his pocket, something of steel dangling from it suggestively.

For an instant, it seemed to the lookers-on that Chesterham visibly cowered and shrank, the next he had to some extent pulled himself together.

"You must be mad!" he said loudly. "Stark, staring mad! When you hear that the visitor to Stanmore's flat on the night of the murder was—"

"We have been aware of that lady's identity from the first." The inspector's tone was ominously quiet. "Your game has been a bold one, Mr. Lee, but I think it is played out now. I shall have to trouble you to come with me to the police station at Caversham. One of my men will get a conveyance from the Carew Arms, or if you would prefer to use your—I should say Lord Chesterham's—motor, perhaps it would be better!"

Chesterham's eyes wandered slowly round from the pale shocked faces of Sir Anthony Carew and Stephen Crasster, to the inspector's keen alert countenance and to his solid-looking assistants behind. Then he drew something from his pocket, something that gleamed in the light. The next instant there was a shot, a sharp exclamation from the inspector, and the men gathered round the prostrate figure on the floor. Furnival was the first to look up.

"The fool I was not to think of this! But he has missed his aim—it is nothing but a flesh wound in the thick part of the leg; I can manage to dress it for the present, and we will call in at Dr. Bennett's as we go through the village."