Lord Elyn had made my thoughts clearer to me by his blunt expressions. He had asked me if I had any inkling of what was up, and, when he said that, I knew quite certainly that, to use that slangy phrase, I thought something was up. Vernon had been moved by some strange impulse to buy the black spaniel, had some strange purpose in connection with it. I felt sure of this. My instinct told me that it was so. What had caused this impulse? What was this purpose? I wondered, but could not tell. I reviewed Vernon’s character as I knew it carefully, considered all that I had heard of him from others, trying to find a clue that would guide me to comprehension. But I remained perplexed. I knew good of him. I had always heard praise of him, except from one person, the man who was dead and in whose house he now lived. Deeming had said to me once that Vernon was a black fanatic; the phrase was strong, brutal even. It recurred to my mind as I walked, and stayed there. Then I thought of the terror in the spaniel’s eyes as it lay motionless against the red curtain of the workroom. And I was troubled, I was strangely ill at ease. It seemed to me that in my friend, hidden away like a thing hidden in a cave, was something mysterious, something even terrible, and that the black spaniel was connected with it. But how could that be? Vernon loved all animals. He was at this very moment devoting his life to the advancement of their welfare. For them he had thrown off his long idleness of the lounging traveller, the luxurious art-lover, who wandered from country to country buying to please his whim. For them he stayed in England and lived laborious days. Why, then, when I thought of the spaniel shut up in his study, should I be chilled with fear? I reasoned with myself, but in vain. The sense of fear, of mystery, remained with me. It was deepened by an incident which occurred six days later. During those days I had not seen Vernon; I had heard nothing of him or of the black spaniel. The incident to which I alluded was my meeting for the first time with Arthur Gernham.