"Pretty well for that," answered Tom Chandler, a smile on his good-natured face. "She told us yesterday in the office that it must be the consciousness of guilt which has worried Sir Dace to a skeleton. Now then, we'll begin." He dotted down my answers to his questions, also what I voluntarily added. Then he took a sheet of paper from his pocket, closely written upon, and compared its statements--they were Tanerton's--with mine. Putting his finger on the paper to mark a place, he looked at me. "Did Sir Dace speak of Pym or of Captain Tanerton that night, when you were playing chess with Miss Fontaine?" "Sir Dace did not come into the drawing-room. He had left the dinner-table in a huff to shut himself up in his library, Miss Fontaine said; and he stayed in it." "Then you did not see Sir Dace at all that night?" "Oh yes, later--when Captain Tanerton and young Saxby came up to tell him of the death. We then all went down to Ship Street together. You have taken that down." "True," said Chandler. "Well, I cannot make much out of it as it stands," he concluded, folding the papers and putting them in his pocket-book. "What do you say is the number of the house in the Marylebone Road?" I told him, and he went away, wishing he could accept my offer of staying to drink tea with us. "Look here, Chandler," I said to him at the front-door: "why don't you take down Sir Dace Fontaine's evidence, as well as mine and Tanerton's?" "I have done it," he answered. "I was with Sir Dace to-day. Mrs. Tanerton's suspicions are of course--absurd," he added, making a pause, as if at a loss for a suitable word, "but for her peace of mind, poor lady, we would like to pitch upon the right individual if we can. And as yet he seems to be a myth." * * * * * The good ship, _Rose of Delhi_, came gaily into port, and took up her berth in St. Katharine's Docks as before; for she had been chartered for London. Her owners, the Freemans, wrote at once from Liverpool to Captain Tanerton, begging him to resume command. Jack wrote back, and declined. * * * * * How is it that whispers get about! Do the birds in the air carry them?--or the winds of heaven? In some cases it seems impossible that anything else can have done it. Paul and Chandler, John Tanerton and his wife, the Squire and myself: we were the only people cognizant of the new suspicion that Alice was striving to cast on Sir Dace, one and all of us had kept silent lips: and yet, the rumour got abroad. Sir Dace Fontaine was accused of knowing more about Pym's death than he ought to know, and Tom Chandler was in London for the purpose of investigating it. This might not have mattered very much for ordinary ears, but it reached those of Sir Dace.