I left the station and walked home. Now, indeed, all my convictions were upset. Colonel Ray had left me outside his clubhouse last night, twenty minutes before the train started, without a word of coming to Braster. Yet he travelled down by the same train, avoided me, lied to Lady Angela and myself this morning, and had exactly the sort of wounds which I had inflicted upon that unknown assailant who attacked me in the darkness. If circumstantial evidence went for anything, Ray himself had been my aggressor. I avoided the turn by Braster Grange and went straight on to the village. Coming out of the post office I found myself face to face with Blanche Moyat. She held out her hand eagerly. "Were you coming in?" she asked. "Well, not to-day," I answered. "I am on my way to Rowchester, and I am late already." She kept by my side. "Come in for a few moments," she begged, in a low tone. "I want to talk to you." "Not the old subject, I hope," I remarked. She looked around with an air of mystery. "Do you know that some one is making inquiries about--that man?" "I always thought it possible," I answered, "that his friends might turn up some time or other." We were opposite the front of the Moyats' house. She opened the door and beckoned me to follow. I hesitated, but eventually did so. She led the way into the drawing-room, and carefully closed the door after us. "Mr. Ducaine," she said, "I mean it, really. There is some one in the village making inquiries--about--the man who was found dead." "Well," I said, "that is not very surprising, is it? His friends were almost certain to turn up sooner or later." "His friends! But do you know who it is?" she asked. I sank resignedly into one of Mrs. Moyat's wool-work covered chairs. An absurd little canary was singing itself hoarse almost over my head. I half closed my eyes. How many more problems was I to be confronted with during these long-drawn-out days of mystery? "Oh, I do not know," I declared. "I am sure I do not care. I am sorry that I ever asked you for one moment to keep your counsel about the fellow. I never saw him, I do not know who he was, I know nothing about him. And I don't want to, Miss Moyat. He may have been prince or pedlar for anything I care." "Well, he wasn't an ordinary person, after all," she declared, with an air of mystery. "Have you heard of the lady who's taken Braster Grange? She's a friend of Lord Blenavon's. He's always there." "I have heard that there is such a person," I answered wearily. "She's been making inquiries right and left--everywhere. There's a notice in yesterday's _Wells Gazette_, and a reward of fifty pounds for any one who can give any information about him sufficient to lead to identification." "If you think," I said, "that you can earn the pounds, pray do not let me stand in your way." She looked at me with a fixed intentness which I found peculiarly irritating.