He remembered all the stories of secret crime that he had heard and read of, some stories involving creatures as seemingly innocent and as fair as Lucille Sivewright. He recalled his own professional experience, which had shown him much of life’s darker side. He remembered with a shudder the infinite hypocrisy, the hidden sins, of women in all outward semblance as pure and womanly as the girl he loved. What if Lucille inherited the fatal taint of her father’s infamy? What if in this fair young girl there lurked some hidden drops of that poison which corrupted the parent’s soul? Could an evil tree produce good fruit? Could grapes come of thistles? The very Scripture was against his fond belief in Lucille Sivewright’s goodness. Could such a father give life to a pure and innocent child? This doubt, once having entered into his mind, lingered there in spite of him. His heart was racked by the odious thought, yet he could not dismiss it. He followed Mr. Wincher to inspect the back part of the house in a very absent-minded condition; but the practical side of his character soon got the upper hand as the investigation proceeded, and he was alert to make any discovery that might be made from the position of doors and windows. In his evening walks with Lucille in the barren old garden he had always come out of the house by a glass door opening out of a long-disused back parlour, in which there were only a few wooden cases, which might for aught Lucius knew be full or empty. Jacob Wincher now led him into the kitchen, a spacious chamber, with a barn-like roof open to the rafters, showing the massive timbers with which the house was built. From the kitchen they descended three shallow steps into a vault-like scullery, out of which, ghastly in their dark emptiness, opened various cellars. Lucius peered into one of them, and saw that a flight of steep stairs led down into a black abyss. ‘Bring a light,’ he said; ‘the man may be hiding in one of these cellars. We’d better explore them all. But first let us lock the doors, and cut off his chances of escape.’ He suited the action to the word, and locked the door leading to the kitchen, and thence to the interior of the house. ‘Where do you and your wife sleep?’ he asked Mr. Wincher. ‘In a little room off the kitchen. It was built for a storeroom, I believe, and there’s shelves all round. My good lady keeps our Sunday clothes on them, and our little bit of tea and sugar and such-like, for we board ourselves.’ ‘One would think you must hear any one passing through the kitchen at night, when the house is quiet,’ said Lucius meditatively. ‘I don’t feel so sure of that, sir. We’re pretty hard sleepers both of us; we’re on the trot all day, you see, and are very near worn out by the time we get to bed.’ ‘Strange,’ said Lucius. ‘I should have thought you must have heard footsteps in the next room to that you sleep in.’