“He went back to the Front again; and the next we heard was that he'd been reported killed in action. It sounds dreadful to say it, I know, but I can't pretend I was anything but glad when I heard the news. He was a horrible creature, horrible in every way. Life with him, even for that short time, had been a waking nightmare; and it was an infinite relief to find myself free of him. Then, in 1926, I married Mr. Fleetwood.” She paused and glanced at the lawyer, as though to draw some encouragement from him. Evidently the sequence of her narrative had been concerted between them beforehand. Wendover's glance passed from her to Stanley Fleetwood; and he could see from the expression on Fleetwood's face how much he must have hated the dead man on Cressida's account. “Last week,” Cressida continued, in a slightly more controlled tone, “I got a letter signed ‘Nicholas Staveley.’ It was a dreadful shock to see that handwriting again. It seems that the report of his death had been a mistake; but he had let it pass for purposes of his own. It had suited him to disappear then. Now it suited him to reappear—so far as I was concerned. You can guess what that meant to me. It invalidated my second marriage; and it threw me into the hands of that brute. Or, at least, if it didn't actually put me into his hands, it gave him a weapon against me which he could use for his own ends. He was a selfish beast, and vindictive, too; and I saw that he meant to stir up all the trouble he could. His letter hinted quite plainly that blackmail was his object in reappearing at this moment. He knew I'd married again, and he saw his chance.” The lawyer produced a paper and handed it across to Sir Clinton. “This is the letter,” he explained. Sir Clinton glanced through it and then put it down on the table. “That's a pretty production,” he commented. “I can understand your feelings, Mrs. Fleetwood. Please go on.” Cressida glanced across at the couch. “Naturally I consulted Mr. Fleetwood,” she continued. “We decided that the best thing to do was to arrange a meeting with the man and try to get him to let us put matters on some bearable kind of footing.” “What we wanted,” Stanley Fleetwood interrupted, “was to persuade him to allow a divorce to go through quietly. Then we could have regularised matters with as little fuss as possible. From what I'd heard of him, he didn't seem the sort who would refuse a bribe, if it was big enough——” He caught the lawyer's warning eye and halted abruptly. “I understand,” Sir Clinton interposed smoothly. “You wished to come to some agreement with him. We needn't discuss the terms. Will you go on, please, Mrs. Fleetwood?”