Doris, after a period of calm, was now profoundly uncomfortable. This kind of prying was the last thing she had expected. She had come prepared to defend Grant, but, beyond one exceedingly personal reference, the detective had studiously shut him out of the conversation. “What am I to say?” she cried. “Do you want a list of all the young men who make sheep’s eyes at me?” “No. I can get that from the Census Bureau. Come, now, Miss Martin. _You_ know. Has any man in the village led you to suspect, shall we put it? that sometime or other, he might ask you to become his wife?” Lo, and behold! Doris’s pretty eyes filled with tears. Superintendent Fowler was so pleased at hearing Scotland Yard introducing a parenthetical query into its sentences that he, sitting opposite, was taken aback when Winter said in a fatherly way: “I’ve been rather clumsy, I’m afraid. But it cannot be helped. I must go blundering on. I’m groping in the dark, you know, but it’s a thousand pities I shall have to tread on _your_ toes.” “It isn’t that,” sobbed Doris. “I hate to put my thoughts into words. That’s all. There _is_ a man whom I’m—afraid of.” “Siddle?” She turned on Winter a face of sudden awe. “How can you possibly guess?” she said wonderingly, and sheer bewilderment dried her tears. “My business is nine-tenths guesswork. At any rate, we are on firm ground now. If you could please yourself, I suppose, Mr. Siddle would not come to tea to-day!” “He certainly would not,” declared the girl emphatically. “You believe he is coming for a purpose?” “Yes.” “Elkin—I must drag him in again for an instant—pretends that the commotion aroused in the village by this murder would incline you favorably to a proposal of marriage. Mr. Siddle may have discovered some virtue in the theory.” “Did Mr. Elkin really hint that I needed _him_ as a shield?” Doris was genuinely angry now. She little imagined that Winter was playing on her emotions with a master hand. “Don’t waste any wrath on Elkin,” he soothed her. “The fellow isn’t worth it. But his crude idea might be developed more subtly by an abler man.” “I think it odd that Mr. Siddle should choose to-day, of all days, for a visit,” she admitted. Winter relapsed into silence for a while. The car was running through a charming countryside, and a glimpse of the sea was obtainable from the crest of each hill. Mr. Fowler was too circumspect to break in on the thread of his coadjutor’s thoughts. The inquiry had taken a curious turn, and was momentarily beyond his grasp. “It’s singular, but it’s true,” said the detective musingly when next he spoke, “that I am now going to ask you to act differently than was in my mind when I sought this interview. I should vastly like to be present when Siddle bares his heart to you this afternoon. “I can invite you to tea.” “Alas! that won’t serve our ends. But, if you feel you have a purpose, you will be nerved to deal with him. Bring him out into that secluded garden of yours—”