"I think so, though some folks think it suicide. Curious you should have stumbled across that young lord," went on Hurd, musingly, "and more curious still that he should have been in the room with Mrs. Krill without recollecting the name. There was a great fuss made about it at the time." "Oh, I can understand Lord George," said Beecot, promptly. "The murder, if it is one, took place before he was born, and as there seems to have been some scandal in the matter, the family hushed it up. This young fellow probably gathered scraps of information from old servants, but from what he said to me in the cab, I think he knows very little." "Quite enough to put me on the track of Lemuel Krill's reason for leaving Christchurch." "Is that the reason?" "Yes. Twenty-three years ago he left Christchurch at the very time Lady Rachel was murdered in his public-house. Then he disappeared for a time, and turned up a year later in Gwynne Street with a young wife whom he had married in the meantime." "Sylvia's mother?" "Exactly. And Miss Norman was born a year later. She's nearly twenty-one, isn't she?" "Yes. She will be twenty-one in three months." Hurd nodded gravely. "The time corresponds," said he. "As the crime was committed twenty-three years back and Lord George is only twenty, I can understand how he knows so little about it. But didn't he connect Mrs. Krill with the man who died in Gwynne Street?" "No. She explained that. The name of Krill appeared only a few times in the papers, and was principally set forth with the portrait, in the hand-bills. I shouldn't think Lord George was the kind of young man to bother about hand-bills." "All the same, he might have heard talk at his club. Everyone isn't so stupid." "No. But, at all events, he did not seem to connect Mrs. Krill with the dead man. And even with regard to the death of his aunt, he fancied she might not be the same woman." "What an ass he must be," said Hurd, contemptuously. "I don't think he has much brain," confessed Paul, shrugging his shoulders; "but he asked me if I thought Mrs. Krill was the same as the landlady of 'The Red Pig,' and I denied that she was. I don't like telling lies, but in this case I hope the departure from truth will be pardoned." "You did very right," said the detective. "The fewer people know about these matters the better--especially a chatterbox like this young fool." "Do you know him?" "Yes, under the name of the Count de la Tour. But I know of him in another way, which I'll reveal later. Hay is still fleecing him?" "He is. But Lord George seems to be growing suspicious of Hay," and Paul related the conversation he had with the young man. Hurd grunted. "I'm sorry," he said. "I want to catch Hay red-handed, and if Lord George grows too clever I may not be able to do so." "Well," said Paul, rather impatiently, "never mind about that fellow just now, but tell me what you have discovered."