“Why have you been avoiding me so persistently?” she asked, making room for the summoned one to sit beside her on the settee. “Perhaps it was because I had just sense enough to see that I had served my turn and wasn’t needed any more,” he answered in a tone that might have been copied faithfully from the king of the contractors in his most brittle mood. “Silly!” she chided, with a strained little laugh. “I could forgive you for saying such a thing as that if you were only sincere. It isn’t Cumberleigh and Freddy Wishart, David; it’s yourself.” “You wrote and told them where you were,” he accused. “As it happens, I did not. But you needn’t try to hide behind a shadow--or two shadows. You have had other reasons for avoiding me. For one thing, you have met Mr. Lushing, and you have quarreled with him.” “Everybody seems to know that,” he complained. “Go on.” “For another thing, you have determined, in spite of all that we have talked about, to fight Mr. Lushing with his own weapons.” This seemed to be too accurate to be classed with the shrewd guesses, and he accused her again. “You’ve been prying into Plegg.” “I haven’t seen Mr. Plegg in weeks; I haven’t been prying into any one, and I haven’t needed to. You have been showing very plainly that you have broken with the ideals--all of them. Why couldn’t you stay up on the pedestal, David? It was such a nice pedestal!” He laughed mirthlessly. “You are such a queer mixture of good, hard sense and back-number romanticism,” he commented. “Can’t you realize that I’ve got to be a man among men?” “That is what you ought to be--in the other and better meaning of the phrase. You won’t make a very successful villain, David.” “Perhaps not; but I shall try mighty hard not to let the other man make a wooden Indian of me,” he returned grimly. “And you haven’t stopped, even at--murder.” She shuddered over the final word, but she would not qualify it. He was regarding her through half-closed eyes. “Having said that much, you ought to say more, don’t you think?” he suggested. “I am going to say more; lots more. That man in the tunnel last night: he wasn’t blown up by a blast.” “How do you know he wasn’t?” “One of your men carried or dragged him half-way to the mouth of the tunnel before the blast was fired.” “Well?” he prompted. “It comes to this; either it was a sheer accident--a stone falling from the roof--or there was foul play. Mr. Lushing says it was foul play.” “Lushing? You don’t mean to say that he has had the brazen effrontery to come to you!” “No; he didn’t come here. He sent me a note; an unsigned note, because he is a coward. He did it once before, when he was dis--when he left the Grillage Company. He says you will be tried for murder if the man dies, and he throws it in my face.” David got upon his feet rather unsteadily, but the unsteadiness was of rage.