The table crashed to the floor as Grell, the last remnants of his self-restraint gone, leapt to his feet. Sir Hilary Thornton sprang between the two men. Foyle also had risen, and though his face was impassive the blue eyes were sparkling and his fists were clenched. "You liar!" raved Grell. "How dare you bring her name into it!" "This excitement will not advance matters," said Foyle placidly. "Sit down for a little, Mr. Grell. You cannot prevent the inevitable." The tense muscles of the prisoner relaxed and a shivering fit shook him from head to foot. He could see the blow that he had striven to avert falling while he stood impotent. He had taken every risk, made every sacrifice man could make, to turn it aside. Now he had been told that he had failed. It was not easy to admit defeat. His debonair courage had gone. Sir Hilary Thornton laid a hand gently on his shoulder. "My dear Mr. Grell," he said, "I don't want to use the ordinary cant about duty and all the rest of it. We may sympathise with you--personally, I admire the attitude you have taken, though perhaps I shouldn't say it--but our own feelings do not matter the toss of a button. Nothing you can do or say will swerve us from what we judge to be the interests of justice." "Let me alone for a little while," answered Grell dully; "I want to think." They sent him back to the detention-room where, with a constable seated opposite to him, he was to spend the night. Foyle rested one arm on the mantelpiece and kicked the fire viciously into a blaze. "Ours is an ungrateful business, Sir Hilary," he grumbled, "but I've never come across a man who put so many difficulties in the way of being saved from the gallows as Mr. Robert Grell." Thornton took a long breath that was almost a sigh. "Poor chap," he said reflectively. "Poor chap!" And then, after an interval, "Poor girl! Couldn't you have dropped a hint, Foyle?" The introduction of sentiment into business was a folly that Heldon Foyle seldom permitted himself. With a shrug he pulled himself together. He shook his head. "We've got to be more certain yet. I daren't tell him too much--for my idea may prove to be wrong. You must remember that it was undoubtedly Eileen Meredith's finger-prints on the dagger. At present it is only surmise of mine how they got there. Finding the prints on her blotting-pad, which I showed you, corresponded with those on the dagger you gave me, was one of the biggest surprises of my life. But we may clear it up now." "H'm," said Thornton. "Well, we shall have to look sharp." A thought struck Foyle. He stood rigid as a statue for a moment, and then slapped his knee with sudden energy, "By God! I believe I've got it!" he exclaimed, and jumped for the telephone.