Ah, he had it! He could pretend (so long as it suited his purpose, at all events), to have been the man caught and left bound in Higgins' care. Simple enough: the knocking over of the butler would be ascribed to a natural ebullition of indignation, the subsequent flight to a hare-brained notion of running down the thief. And yet even that explanation had its difficulties. How was he to account for the fact that he had failed to communicate with the police--knowing that his treasure had been ravished? It was all very involved. Mr. Maitland returned the glass to O'Hagan and, cradling his head in his hands, racked his brains in vain for a satisfactory tale to tell. There were so many things to be taken into consideration. There was the girl in grey.... Not that he had forgotten her for an instant; his fury raged but the higher at the thought that Anisty's interference had prevented his (Maitland's) keeping the engagement. Doubtless the girl had waited, then gone away in anger, believing that the man in whom she had placed faith had proved himself unworthy. And so he had lost her for ever, in all likelihood: they would never meet again. But that telephone call? "O'Hagan," demanded the haggard and distraught young man, "who was that on the wire just now?" Being a thoroughly trained servant, O'Hagan had waited that question in silence, a-quiver with impatience though he was. Now, his tongue unleashed, his words fairly stumbled on one another's heels in his anxiety to get them out in the least possible time. "Sure, an' 'twas a leddy, sor, be the v'ice av her, askin' were ye in, and mesilf havin' seen ye go out no longer ago thin wan o'clock and yersilf sayin' not a worrud about comin' back at all at all, pwhat was I to be tellin' her, aven if ye were lyin' there on the dievan all unbeknownest to me, which the same mesilf can not----" "Help!" pleaded the young man feebly, smiling. "One thing at a time, please, O'Hagan. Answer me one question: Did she give a name?" "She did not, sor, though mesilf----" "There, there! Wait a bit. I want to think." Of course she had given no name; it wouldn't be like her.... What was he thinking of, anyway? It could not have been the grey girl; for she knew him only as Anisty; she could never have thought him himself, Maitland.... But what other woman of his acquaintance did not believe him to be out of town? With a hopeless gesture, Maitland gave it up, conceding the mystery too deep for him, his intellect too feeble to grapple with all its infinite ramifications. The counsel he had given O'Hagan seemed most appropriate to his present needs: One thing at a time. And obviously the first thing that lay to his hand was the silencing of O'Hagan.