In the meantime there was this matter of Mr. Foster’s arrest. Not in his wildest dreams had Guy ever expected Mr. Foster to be arrested. Until a body is forthcoming, surely an arrest for murder cannot be effected; Guy was not very sure on the point, but certainly that was his impression. What, then, was the Colonel’s game? What, moreover, had Foster been confessing to? With knitted brows Guy walked into his library and threw himself into a chair to think things out. Either the scheme was being successful beyond all hopes, or else a nasty snag had made its appearance somewhere. He wondered which it was. In the meantime the objects of his earnest thought were walking along the road, followed by Alan’s eager eyes, like Jezebel’s from an upper window. They walked slowly, for all three had plenty to think about, and in silence. Two hundred yards or more had been covered before the Colonel gave tongue. “You know, Foster,” he remarked, with more of the easy chattiness of the victor to the vanquished than he had hitherto displayed, “you know, it was that note that really gave you away. What on earth made you write it on your own note-paper?” Mr. Foster raised dull eyes from an inward contemplation of last breakfasts and clergyman’s ministrations. “What note?” he asked apathetically. “That note you wrote Nesbitt, of course, to get him away from the house. By the way, who was the girl?” “I don’t know,” mourned Mr. Foster. “You don’t know?” repeated the Colonel incredulously. “No, I’d never even asked her her name.” “Well, I’ll be damned!” “What was that you said about a note?” asked Mr. Foster after a little pause. “I never wrote a note to Nesbitt.” “Don’t be funny,” snapped the Colonel. “I wasn’t,” replied Mr. Foster humbly, registering a mental memorandum that denying the authorship of notes he hadn’t written was considered humorous. There was another little silence. “Well,” said the Colonel, “got any reason why I shouldn’t have you clapped into jail, Foster, eh?” Mr. Foster’s face brightened under its coal. Had he a chance after all? “I—I didn’t know I was doing wrong,” he said eagerly. “She told me she meant to reform, you see. I wasn’t exactly sheltering her from the law: only from those scoundrels who were after her. I—I thought it right to do so. Of course,” added Mr. Foster virtuously, “I was going to inform the police when the danger was over, that is, in an hour or two. I—I know my duty as a citizen, I hope. Especially after she’d actually confessed to the murder. That’s what makes it so unfair, I think, arresting me too. If you’d only given me time you’d have heard from me all about it.” In his anxiety to escape the dock himself Mr. Foster had no compunction in pushing his recent visitor more securely inside it. “What the blazes are you talking about?” demanded the Colonel blankly. The Inspector drew out his notebook and looked official.