“Your letter has come as a complete surprise, as you expected, no doubt. You seem to know all about what has happened, and I suppose you will do all you can to make the worst of things—at least I can't take any other meaning out of what you have written. I shall come to Neptune's Seat to-night at 11 p.m. to hear what you have to say. But I warn you plainly that I will not submit to being blackmailed by you, since that seems to be what is in your mind.” And the signature,” Sir Clinton concluded, “is _Cressida Fleetwood_.” The inspector leaned forward and took the letter. “_Now_ we've got something to go on!” he exclaimed jubilantly. “That name, coupled with the hotel note-paper, ought to let us lay our hands on her within half an hour, if we've any luck at all.” Wendover had been thunder-struck by the revelation of the signature. His mind involuntarily called up a picture of Cressida as he had seen her less than twenty-four hours earlier, frank and care-free, and so evidently happy with her husband. A girl like that could hardly be mixed up with a brutal murder; it seemed too incongruous. Then across his memory flitted a recollection of Sir Clinton's description of the poker-sharp, and the implied warning against trusting too much to appearances; but he resolutely put them aside. A glance at Armadale's face tended to increase his bias, for it displayed a hardly restrained exultation. Quite evidently the inspector supposed that his case was now well on the road to a satisfactory solution. “Damned man-hunter!” Wendover commented inwardly, quite forgetting that a few minutes earlier he himself had been every bit as eager as the inspector. “I don't want to see her fall into that brute's hands.” His imagination called up a picture of Cressida, with that fascinating touch of shyness changed to dismay, faced by the harsh interrogations of an Armadale determined to force from her some damning statement. The inspector would see no reason for kindly treatment in the case of a woman whom he seemed to have condemned already in his mind. Wendover turned to Sir Clinton in the hope of seeing some signs of other feelings there. But the chief constable's face betrayed nothing whatever about his thoughts, and Wendover remembered that Sir Clinton had known the contents of the letter before he left the beach. It had not affected him when he read it then, Wendover recalled; for there had been no change in his manner. Suddenly the squire felt isolated from his companions. They were merely a couple of officials carrying out a piece of work, regardless of what the end of it might be; whereas he himself had still his natural human sympathies to sway him in his judgments and tip the scale in a case of doubt. Almost with surprise, he found himself disliking Armadale intensely; a great, coarse-fibred creature who cared nothing for the disaster which he was about to unchain within an hour.