"Well, old bean," said Dot. "You do come as a bit of a surprise. We'd not expected you before Tuesday. But our two gentlemen friends--Albert and Hector--I think you've met them--have to be back at their job at six. So we shan't keep you long. The kitchen door's open if you care to slip into the house and wait." Luke's powerful mind made a rapid deduction. This could never have happened if Mabel had not been powerless to prevent it. So Mabel must have ... Yes, the oxalic acid. "Can you tell me," he said in sepulchral tones, "where I shall find the body of my poor wife?" "Afraid I can't," said Dot. Her laughter jarred on him. "Let us," he said, "be reverent. When did she die?" Here Dash, under the pink parasol, broke in, "But she's alive. And I'll bet she's a good deal livelier than she's been for years past. I helped her pack, and it was some trousseau. The old girl's done a bunk. See? Skipped it with a gentleman friend of hers." "You might have mentioned that before," said Luke, aggrieved. "I quite thought that something was the matter." "Well, she's left a letter for you in your almost-silver cigarette case. You'll find it in the bath-room, balanced on the hot-water tap. You run along and read it. You're the least little bit in the way at this tea party." 4 Seated on the edge of the bath, Luke read as follows: "You could always see every point of view except one, and that was your wife's. "Once or twice the sting of your jelly-fish of a conscience made you try to be nice to me. There are words and acts from a man to a woman which may be lovely to the woman if they come spontaneously and naturally. If they are produced as by a force-pump, they are an insult. If you tried to hide the pump, it was a poor effort. "When you took up with that Tyburn minx, I thought that you had realized the situation, that you saw that I found life with you detestable and intolerable, and that you meant to give me a chance to divorce you. I employed a private detective with what I had saved out of the house-money, and had you watched. The detective reported that there was nothing good enough--or bad enough----for the High Court, and that the woman seemed to be doing most of the work. "So as the mixture of cowardice and selfishness which you call your conscience would not let you give me a chance to divorce you, I determined to make you divorce me. The first thing to do was to get you out of the way. It is so trying and undignified to elope if a husband is looking on, and possibly interfering. So I adopted a system of intensive spring-cleaning. I don't think I left out anything which could inconvenience and annoy you. It went on and on. No house has been spring-cleaned like this since the world began. I fancy it was the whitewash over your books that finally shunted you. You left in the early morning. I packed at leisure and left in the evening, taking with me a gentleman who financed that great success, Doom Dagshaw's Mammoth Circus.