The period immediately following the attack upon Sylvia was one of intense inquietude in Wendover’s mind. Up to that point he had persuaded himself that the affairs at Whistlefield would eventually prove to be linked up in some way with the Hackleton case. The connection of some of the incidents—the attack on Ernest Shandon, for one—had certainly been obscure; but Wendover had nursed an irrational belief that in the end all the threads would lead back to Hackleton, and that the whole mystery would find a simple explanation which would bring it within the borders of normal motives and sane sequences of actions. The latest tragedy, however, could not be squared with any of his preconceived ideas. What possible relationship could exist between Hackleton and Sylvia which would make her removal essential to the financier? It was hardly likely that either she or Ernest had been the repository of Neville Shandon’s secrets. But if Hackleton dropped out of the piece, then the whole affair seemed to lose any thread of purpose and to become a mere massacre perpetrated by some being urged on by motives which lay outside the bounds of reason. Instead of a coldly calculating criminal, Wendover seemed to find himself confronted by a creature beyond the pale of humanity, a thing that slew at random out of sheer lust for death. His own normal mind revolted from such a monster; and he strove hard to piece the evidence together again in some way which would eliminate this nightmare figure and replace it by a criminal actuated by motives which sane intellects could grasp. As soon as he got Sir Clinton alone after the tragedy at Whistlefield, he had done his best to extort information; but in this he had failed completely. Every one of his inquiries was met by a curt denial of any ulterior knowledge, though it was manifest that Sir Clinton was concentrating his whole mind on the latest developments in the Whistlefield affair. Despite this blank negation, however, the Squire got the impression that the Chief Constable’s anxiety centred round Sylvia rather than the Whistlefield case as a whole. From an unguarded word he inferred that Sir Clinton had, somehow or other, taken a risk; and that the results had been very different from what he had expected. Something had cut across Sir Clinton’s schemes and had shaken his confidence.