“Why, yes!” he replied quietly. “Do you mean to say you never thought of that? that it never occurred to you that Mary Newton may have admitted to her father that Mr. Ledbury had been the man who had so wickedly wronged her, but that she, in her remote little village, had also no idea that the Mr. Ledbury she meant was recently made, and is now styled, Lord Walterton? “Old Man Newton, who knew of the gossip which had coupled his daughter’s name, years ago, with the younger Mr. Ledbury, naturally took it for granted that she was referring to him. Moreover, we may take it from the girl’s subsequent attitude that she did all she could to shield the man whom she had once loved; women, you know, have that sort of little way with them. “Old Newton, fully convinced that young Ledbury was the man he wanted, went up to The Towers and had the stormy interview, which no doubt greatly puzzled the young Hussar. He undoubtedly spoke of it to his brother, Lord Walterton, who, newly married and of high social position, would necessarily dread a scandal as much as anybody. “Lord Walterton went up to town with his young wife the following morning. Ayrsham is only forty minutes from London. He came down in the evening, met Mary in the lane, asked to see her father, and killed him in a moment of passion, when he found that the old man’s demands were preposterously unreasonable. Moreover, Englishmen in all grades of society have an innate horror of being bullied or blackmailed; the murder probably was not premeditated, but the outcome of rage at being browbeaten by the old man. “You see, the police did not use their common sense over so simple a matter. They naturally made no enquiries as to Lord Walterton’s movements, who seemingly had absolutely nothing to do with the case. If they had, I feel convinced that they would have found that his lordship would have had some difficulty in satisfying everybody as to his whereabouts on that particular Tuesday night. “Think of it, it is so simple—the only possible solution of that strange and unaccountable mystery.” XI. The Affair at the Novelty Theatre Chapter I “Talking of mysteries,” said the man in the corner, rather irrelevantly, for he had not opened his mouth since he sat down and ordered his lunch, “talking of mysteries, it is always a puzzle to me how few thefts are committed in the dressing-rooms of fashionable actresses during a performance.” “There have been one or two,” I suggested, “but nothing of any value was stolen.” “Yet you remember that affair at the Novelty Theatre a year or two ago, don’t you?” he added. “It created a great deal of sensation at the time. You see, Miss Phyllis Morgan was, and still is, a very fashionable and popular actress, and her pearls are quite amongst the wonders of the world. She herself valued them at £10,000, and several experts who remember the pearls quite concur with that valuation.