“I want you to be less vague, Luttrell; and I think you can. A man doesn’t say such a thing as you’ve said without more meaning than you’ve acknowledged.” “I assure you⸺” I began. But he stopped me. “Now look here,” he said. “One often has a thought behind one’s thought, like a body behind its shadow. You’ve found the shadow; now look for the body, and I’ll bet you’ll find that too.” His words seemed to clear away some mystery from my mind, but I shrank from what was now revealed—the body behind the shadow. “I see you know now what you suspect,” he said, still looking into my eyes with intensity. “What is it?” “I do know now,” I answered. “But it’s monstrous, and upon my word I’m ashamed to say it. For you must know that I’ve a great regard for Vernon.” “And so have—or had—I. His tenderness for the suffering of the animal world drew me to him. I can’t forget that even now, after this beastly affair of the dog.” “His tenderness for the animal world,” I repeated. “It’s just that—just my knowledge of that, which makes my suspicion so monstrous.” “Let’s have it, I must have it!” he said. “You’re no backbiter, you’re an honest fellow. I can see that. Go ahead. I shan’t mistake your motives.” There was a compelling frankness about him. I yielded to it. “My suspicion is that perhaps Vernon is being cruel to that dog,” I said. Gernham sat quite still. I saw that my words had deeply astonished him. But he did not burst forth, as many another man would have done, in a denial of the possibility of my suspicion being roused by a horrid fact, being well founded. He was a very quick man, and full of finesse despite his bluntness. “What are your reasons?” he said slowly. “I can scarcely say I have any. Let me think, though.” After a minute I described to him minutely how Vernon had regarded the spaniel in the Park, the dog’s fear there, its much greater terror on being brought into the house in Wimpole Street, Vernon’s strange excitement on its arrival, and excitement in which there seemed to be an admixture of triumph, his laughter as he opened the door of the room in which the spaniel was confined; the dog’s rush for safety to Lord Elyn, and shrinking away when Vernon approached it. When I had finished, I added— “There’s one thing more.” “What is it?” Then I related to him my meeting with Cragg on the previous night, and what the man had told me about Vernon’s keeping the spaniel perpetually shut up. “That’s all,” I ended. “Not much, is it?” “D’you know,” he said, “what’s far the most striking fact in all that you’ve told me?” “What?” I asked. “The dog’s horror of Kersteven. The rest may be nothing—fancy of yours or oddity of manner on Kersteven’s part. But the dog’s horror of Kersteven is very strange, and—unless your suspicion is correct, which God forbid—very unnatural.” “Unnatural—that’s just what Lord Elyn called it.” “Ah!” “And his trying to keep the fact of the dog being in the house from you. Isn’t that very strange?”