"Mr. Merton," she said; her voice rather low, "which ever of us is right, I think we must be getting near rather a critical point. Don't you think you had better send off that wire to Captain Whiteclett?" I shook my head. "Not quite yet," I said. "You see it's a serious matter dragging my cousin out here unless one is quite certain he will be needed." "But then he may not be in time!" "I must risk that. But you may rest assured I'll wire the very instant I know it won't be bringing him out on a wild goose chase." For an instant she was silent again, and then she suddenly said, "I'm sure that writing was forged!" It seemed to me that I read in her exclamation a kind of whipping up of her unbelief, as though she needed to reassure herself. "A pair of gloves on it?" I suggested. I quite confess that it was not one of my most tactful suggestions. She froze up again at once. Not that there was anything unkind in her eye as we said good-bye, only it was clear that in the meantime we were each going our own way. I set out at my best pace back for I was hot for instant action, and Jean's doubts, though I dismissed them as quite unjustified by anything in the writing, nevertheless made me anxious to settle the question at once. The end might be very near indeed, I told myself, as I strode out with the last remains of my limp quite vanished. But what prompted those doubts; a genuine disbelief in the authenticity of the handwriting, or a perception of the logical consequences and a very natural shrinking from them? I wondered very much. The fact that she had refrained from asking a single question as to what I meant to do, suggested the second solution. And yet it was curiously unlike Jean Rendall's fearless spirit. XV PART OF THE TRUTH I never remember feeling more intensely chagrined than when I reached our bleak house twenty minutes late for our early dinner to find the doctor had eaten a hurried meal quarter of an hour before the usual hour and rushed out to attend an urgent case. I asked at once whether he had been told of the pocket book. Yes, it appeared he had. He had seemed very interested, but had immediately ordered his dinner hour to be advanced and then hurried away without putting further questions. Was his haste a consequence of what he was told, or merely a coincidence? Well, I was resolved to leave that point in doubt no later than his return. I hardly debated at all the question of what to do. The baffling business of groping in the dark, and daily scheming to discover a window, without giving myself away, had gone on long enough. I had found a head at last and I meant to hit it. It might turn out to be the wrong head; still, I felt convinced I could scarcely fail to discover something fresh.