I hesitated, wondering whether to tell him all the facts as I knew them and obtain his assistance in my further inquiries. It struck me that he, a professional investigator of crime, shrewd, clear-headed and acquainted with all the methods and subterfuges of evil-doers, might suggest some other means which had not occurred to me. I had hitherto been deterred from making any explanation of my discoveries and suspicions on account of my strong love for Eva, but now the idea took possession of me that if I explained the whole to Boyd and told him of my deep affection for her, we might work together, and perhaps at length obtain some solution of this most intricate of problems. I was sick with the giddiness of one who falls from some great height. I had lost my hold upon the dreams and hopes of life. "You're quite right, Boyd," I said, handing him the cigarettes. "I know that man." "Who is he? He looks rather gentlemanly. That shabby get-up of his was a fake, I'm sure." "Yes," I responded. "He's a man pretty well-to-do. His name is Blain, and he is the husband of Mrs. Blain, whom, you recollect, is supposed to have taken the house in Phillimore Place." The detective gave vent to an unwritable exclamation. "Blain!" he echoed, his face betraying a look of amazement, and pausing with a lighted vesta in his hand. "Well, that's indeed a facer!" Then he added: "He must, in that case, know something of the matter as well as his wife." At that moment there was a tap at the door of the sitting-room, and old Mrs. Joad entered with a letter which, she said, had come by the last post and she had forgotten to give it to me. By the writing I saw it was from Eva, and eagerly read it. It was a brief note to say that her mother had been called away to her brother in Inverness, who was seriously ill, that The Hollies was closed, and that she had accepted an invitation to remain the guest of the Blains until Lady Glaslyn's return. I handed the note to the detective without comment. "Well," he exclaimed, looking up at me when he had read it, "there's nothing very fishy about that, is there?" Then I recollected that he was in ignorance of my suspicions. Yet I loved Eva with all my soul and held back from placing any facts in the hands of this man who, with ruthless disregard for my affection or my feelings, would perhaps arrest her for complicity in the crime. And yet as I sat before him, watching his face through the blue haze of cigarette smoke, I felt impelled to seek his aid, for this tangled chain of recent events had utterly bewildered and unnerved me. I was not yet strong again after the strange seizure which had so puzzled the doctor, and a sense of gloom and despair had since overwhelmed me, arising perhaps from the constant suspicion that a secret attempt had been made upon my life.