“He mayn’t exactly like all this, but he’s getting something out of it.” “He is not getting much of what he evidently wants most. I am out of all patience,” said Lady Mallowe. “Joan treads him in the mire and sails about professing to be conducting herself flawlessly. She is too clever for me,” she added with bitterness. Palliser laughed softly and said: “She has got something up her sleeve, and so has he.” “He!” Lady Mallowe quite ejaculated the word. “She always has. That’s her abominable secretive way. But he! T. Tembarom with something up his sleeve! One can’t imagine it.” “Almost everybody has. I found that out long years ago,” said Palliser, looking at his cigar end again as if consulting it. “Since I arrived at the conclusion, I always take it for granted, and look out for it. I’ve become rather clever in following such things up, and I have taken an unusual interest in T. Tembarom from the first.” Lady Mallowe turned her handsome face, much softened by an enwreathing gauze scarf, toward him anxiously. “Do you think his depression, or whatever it is, means Joan?” she asked. “If he is depressed by her, you need not be discouraged,” smiled Palliser. “The time to lose hope would be when, despite her ingenuities, he became entirely cheerful. But,” he added after a pause, “I have an idea there is some other little thing.” “Do you suppose that some young woman he has left behind in New York is demanding her rights?” said Lady Mallowe, with annoyance. “That is exactly the kind of thing Joan would like to hear, and so entirely natural. Some shop-girl or other.” “Quite natural, as you say; but he would scarcely be running up to London and consulting Scotland Yard about her,” Palliser answered. “Scotland Yard!” ejaculated his companion. “Scotland Yard has also come to him,” he went on. “Did you chance to see a red-faced person who spent a morning with him last week?” “He looked like a butcher, and I thought he might be one of his friends,” Lady Mallowe said. “I recognized the man. He is an extremely clever detective, much respected for his resources in the matter of following clues which are so attenuated as to be scarcely clues at all.” “Clues have no connection with Joan,” said Lady Mallowe, still more annoyed. “All London knows her miserable story.” “Have you--” Captain Palliser’s tone was thoughtful--“has any one ever seen Strangeways?” “No. Can you imagine anything more absurdly romantic? A creature without a memory, shut up in a remote wing of a place like this, as if he were the Man with the Iron Mask. Romance is not quite compatible with T. Tembarom.”