“Then he would place himself in a remarkably dangerous position,” said Michael. “Particularly”—he watched the man closely—“if a woman friend, who is no longer a woman friend, happened to be a witness or had knowledge of the act.” Gregory Penne’s one visible eye blinked quickly, and he went that curious purple colour which Michael had seen before when he was agitated. “Suppose she tried to get money out of him by threatening to tell the police?” “Then,” said the patient Michael, “she would go to prison for blackmail, and possibly as an accessory to or after the fact.” “Would she?” Sir Gregory’s voice was eager. “She would be an accessory if she saw—him cut the man down? Mind you, this happened years ago. There’s a Statute of Limitations, isn’t there?” “Not for murder,” said Michael. “Murder! Would you call that murder?” asked the other in alarm. “In self-defence? Rot!” Things were gradually being made light to Michael. Once Stella Mendoza had called the man a murderer, and Michael’s nimble mind, which could reconstruct the scene with almost unerring precision, began to grow active. A servant, a coloured man, probably, one of his Malayan slaves, had run amok, and Penne had killed him—possibly in self-defence—and then had grown frightened of the consequences. He remembered Stella’s description—“Penne is a bluffer and a coward at heart.” That was the story in a nutshell. “Where did you bury your unfortunate victim?” he asked coolly, and the man started. “Bury? What do you mean?” he blustered. “I didn’t murder or bury anybody. I was merely putting a hypothetical case to you.” “It sounded more real than hypothesis,” said Michael, “but I won’t press the question.” In truth, crimes of this character bored Michael Brixan; and, but for the unusual and curious circumstances of the Head-Hunter’s villainies, he would have dropped the case almost as soon as he came on to it. There was yet another attraction, which he did not name, even to himself. As for Sir Gregory Penne, the grossness of the man and his hobbies, the sordid vulgarity of his amours, were more than a little sickening. He would gladly have cut Sir Gregory out of life, only—he was not yet sure. “It is very curious how these questions crop up,” Penne was saying, as he came out of his reverie. “A chap like myself, who doesn’t have much to occupy his mind, gets on an abstract problem of that kind and never leaves it. So she’d be an accessory after the fact, would she? That would mean penal servitude.” He seemed to derive a great deal of satisfaction from this thought, and was almost amiable by the time Michael parted from him, after an examination of the broken handcuffs. They were British and of an old pattern. “Is Bhag hurt very much?” asked Michael as he put them down.