Willitts was sitting with his elbows on his knees, his hands supporting his chin. The light from the open door behind him lay over his back, gilded the top of his smooth head and slanted across his cheek. He was not smoking and he was very still, facts noted by Mr. Larkin. The detective stretched, yawned with a sleepy sound and said: "So it’s still a subject of popular curiosity, is it?" "Yes, _it_ is, but why should Mr. Price be?" The valet’s voice was low and quiet, holding a quality hard to define; the listener decided it was less uneasiness than resentment. After a moment’s silence he spoke again, very softly, as if the words were self-communings: "I’d like to know who the feller is." Mr. Larkin’s feet came down from the rail striking the floor with a thud. He sat up and looked at his friend: "I can tell you. He’s a detective, Gus O’Malley, employed by Whitney & Whitney." Willitts’ hands dropped and he squared round: "A detective! _That’s_ it, is it? _That_ accounts for the milk in the cocoanut. I might have guessed it. And what’s he after me for?" "You lived at Grasslands. Something might be dug out of you." "But tell me, why should he be curious about Mr. Price?" He had dropped one hand on the flooring and supported by it leaned forward toward his companion. The boyish good humor had gone from his face; it looked sharp-set and pugnacious. The other shrugged: "Ask _him_. All I can tell you is that Whitney & Whitney are Mrs. Janney’s lawyers." Willitts pondered, and while he pondered his eyes stared past the shadowy shape that was Mr. Larkin into the vine-draped blackness of the porch. Then he said: "Mrs. Janney’s down on Mr. Price. She’s all for her daughter. I think she ’ates ’im." The two h’s dropped off with a simple unconsciousness that surprised Mr. Larkin. Never before in his intercourse with Willitts had he heard the letter so much as slighted. He made a mental note of it and said dryly: "So I’ve heard." The man again relapsed into thought, his glance riveted on the darkness, his expression obviously perturbed. Suddenly he looked at the vague bulk of Mr. Larkin and said sharply: "’Ow do _you_ know so much about ’im?" Mr. Larkin’s answer came out of the shadow with businesslike promptness: "Because I’m a detective myself." For a moment the valet’s face seemed to set, lose its flesh and blood mobility and harden into something stony, its lines fixed, vitality suspended,—a vacuous, staring mask. Then life came back to it, broke its iciness, and flooded it with a frank, almost ludicrous astonishment. "You—you!" he stammered out, "and me never so much as thinking it! Would any one, I’m asking you? Would—" he stopped, his amazement gone, a sudden belligerent fierceness taking its place, "And are you after Mr. Price too?" Mr. Larkin laughed: "I’m after no one at this stage. I’m only assembling data. If O’Malley’s got to the point of finding a suspect he’s far ahead of me."