He listened attentively. Watching his face, she saw only a slight smile, as of a mellowed elder making allowances for the irresponsibility and supercharged imagination of youth, and that comprehensive tolerance hardly changed as she piled mystery upon mystery and thrill upon thrill. But for the warning which the Saint had drilled into her, to trust nobody, she would have accepted Lapping as honorary uncle in all sincerity, without hesitation. It was almost impossible to believe that this congenial, simple-minded, clean-looking man could be an associate of the Tiger’s—but then, it was almost as hard to realise that he possessed one of the keenest legal brains of his day, and that those pleasant brown features had assumed the inexorable mask of Justice and the same lips that smiled so avuncularly now had pronounced sentence of death upon many men. Presently her recital finished, and she was waiting for his response. He pulled a flowery bandanna from his pocket and blew his nose loudly, and then he turned to her with twinkling grey eyes. “It’s certainly got the makings of a good story,” he confessed calmly. “But it happened!” she insisted. “All in a few hours, last night. Surely you must see that there’s something queer in the wind? There’s some foundation to those rumours, but there’s always the chance that the gossips have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Do you think Mr. Templar’s a detective?” He shrugged. “Who am I to say? Do detectives behave like that except in detective stories?” She played crestfallen, looking at him appealingly. “You must know a lot about detectives, and if you say they don’t . . . then I suppose he’s a crook. But I can’t believe that!” “If a crook couldn’t convince people that he was honest,” Lapping pointed out, “he’d have to give up the game and go into the workhouse.” “But Mr. Templar’s different.” “They always are,” said Lapping cynically. But a mocking spray of wrinkles remained creased up at the corners of his eyes, and his mouth was still half-smiling. That wasn’t the way a man who wanted to blacken another in the eyes of an infatuated girl would go about it. She challenged him. “You’re still ragging,” she accused—“and I wish you wouldn’t. _Please_ be solemn, just for a minute.” “But what’s the use?” he temporised. “In any case, either you love him already or you don’t. Which is it?” “I do,” she answered defiantly. He made a gesture of humorous despair. “If that’s true, nothing anyone can say will change you. The law is taken out of my hands. If I say I believe in him, you’ll fall on my neck and say how wise I am to see deeper than everybody else. If I say I don’t believe in him, and advise you to give him up, you’ll call me a spiteful old fool, and rush off and fall on his neck and tell him that you don’t care what the rest of the world says. So what can I do?” “Just give me your honest opinion. What would you advise me to do if I were your daughter, for instance?” He winced.