“Decidedly not. I mean that a woman was the motive power. Women are not given to avenging their wrongs with their own hands. They will instigate the men who love them to desperate crimes—unconsciously perhaps—for they are the first to howl when the crime has been committed, and the lover’s neck is in danger. But jealousy is the most powerful factor of all, and I take it jealousy was at the bottom of the Cheriton crime. I take it that some intrigue of Sir Godfrey’s youth was at the root of the matter.” “Strange as you may consider such a belief, Mr. Churton, I am inclined to think that Sir Godfrey’s youth was innocent of intrigues—that he never loved any woman except my cousin, whom he adored from the time he was eighteen, when she was a lovely child of eleven. It was a very romantic attachment, and the kind of attachment which keeps a man clear of low associations.” “You and Lord Cheriton tell me the same story, sir,” said the detective, with a touch of impatience; “but if this immaculate young man never injured anybody, how do you account for that bullet?” “It is unaccountable, except upon a far-fetched hypothesis.” “What may that be?” “That the act of vengeance—though striking Godfrey Carmichael—was aimed at Lord Cheriton; that the blow was meant to ruin his daughter’s life, and by ricochet strike him to the heart. I think we have spoken of this possibility before to-night.” After that evening with Churton, Theodore made up his mind that there was no assistance to be looked for from this quarter. The detective had exhausted his means of investigation, and had nothing further to suggest. He was too practical a man to waste time or thought upon speculative theories. Theodore saw, therefore, that if he were to pursue the subject further he must think and work for himself. After considering the question from every possible point of view, he became the more established in the idea that Godfrey Carmichael had been the scapegoat of another man’s sin, the vicarious victim whose death was to strike at a guilty life. Of his youth it was easy to know all that there was to be known. He had lived in the sight of his fellow-men, a young man of too much social importance to be able to hide any youthful indiscretions or wrong-doing. But what of that other and so much longer life? What of the early struggles of the self-made man? What of the history of James Dalbrook in those long years of bachelor life in London, when he was slowly working his way to the front? Might not there have been some hidden sin in that life, some sin dark enough to awaken a sleepless vengeance, a malignity which should descend upon him in the day of peace and prosperity like a thunderbolt from a clear and quiet sky?