Dick smiled slightly. "Both mother and daughter are connected with the affair, and are in deadly fear," he replied decisively. "While in the punt with Mary Blain I had a long chat with her, and the conclusion I've formed is that she knows all about it. Besides, she was very anxious to know your recent movements--what you had been doing during the past week or so." "I wonder whether she suspects?" "No, I don't think so," he answered. "Neither mother nor daughter dream that we are in possession of the secret. You see no one has returned to the place since the fatal night, and, as nothing has appeared in the papers, they naturally conclude that the affair has not yet been discovered." "They evidently devour almost every morning and evening paper as it arrives down there. Did you notice the heap of papers in the morning-room?" I asked. "Of course. I kept my eyes well open while there," he replied. "Did it strike you that the plate used at dinner was of exactly the same pattern as that on the table at Phillimore Place, and further, that among a pile of novels in the drawing-room was a book which one would not expect to find in such a place--a work known mainly to toxicologists, for it deals wholly with the potency of poisons?" "No," I said in surprise, "I didn't notice either of those things." "But I did," he went on reflectively. "All these facts go to convince me." "Of what?" "That we are working in the right direction to obtain a key to the mystery," he responded. Then suddenly he added: "By the way, that girl Glaslyn is certainly very beautiful. I envied you, old fellow, when you took her for a row." I smiled. I had determined not to reveal to him her identity as the woman whom I had first discovered lifeless, but his natural shrewdness was far greater than mine. He was a born investigator of crime, and had not Fate placed him in a newspaper office, he would, I believe, have become a renowned detective. "Glaslyn? Eva Glaslyn?" he repeated, as if to himself. "Why, surely that's the name of the girl you met in St. James's Park and followed to Hampton--the woman whom you found dead on your first visit to the house with Patterson? Is that really so?" he cried, in sudden amazement. I nodded, without replying. "Then, Frank, old chap," he answered in the low, hoarse voice of one utterly staggered, "this affair has assumed such a devilishly complicated phase that I fear we shall never get at the truth. To approach any of those three women would only be to place them on their guard, and without their assistance we can't possibly act with success." "Then what do you suggest?" I asked. "Suggest? I can suggest nothing," he answered. "The complications on every side are too great--far too great."