Again I referred to the loss of my wife, declaring that if I found her I would willingly forgo all further investigation into the Professor's death. The handsome girl exchanged glances with her lover, glances which showed me plainly that they were acting in accordance with some premeditated plan. Leonard Langton was a sharp, shrewd, far-seeing man, or he would never have held the appointment of private secretary to Sir Albert Oppenheim. "Well, Mr. Holford," he said, "why don't you speak candidly and openly? You are, I take it, eager to make terms with your enemies, eh?" "But who are my enemies?" I cried blankly. "As far as I'm aware, I've made none!" "A man arouses enmity often without intention," was his reply. "I cannot, of course, tell who are these enemies of yours, but it is evident from your statement the other day at Wimpole Street that they are responsible for your wife's disappearance." "Well," I said, "you are right. I am open to make terms if Mabel is given back at once to me." "And what are they?" asked Ethelwynn, whose very eagerness condemned her. "Pardon me, Miss Greer," I said rather hastily, "but I cannot discern in what manner my matrimonial affairs can interest you." "Oh--er--well," she laughed nervously, "of course they don't really-- only your wife's disappearance has struck me as very remarkable." "No, Miss Greer,"! Said, "not really so remarkable as it at first appears. My own inquisitiveness was the cause of her being enticed away, so that I might be drawn off the investigation I had undertaken-- the inquiry into who killed Professor Greer." Her cheeks went paler, and she bit her lip. Her whole attitude was that of a woman aware of a bitter and tragic truth, yet, for her own honour, she dared not divulge it. She undoubtedly held the secret--the secret of her father's death. Yet, for some purpose that was yet a complete enigma, she was protecting the impostor who had stepped into the dead man's shoes. The pair had brought me down there in order to entrap me--most probably a plot of Kirk's. Their intention was to mislead and deceive me, and at the same time to secure my silence. But in my frantic anxiety and constant dread I was not easily entrapped. I had seen through the transparency of Kirk's attitude, and I had likewise proved to my own satisfaction that, however much of the truth Leonard Langton knew, the girl of the innocent eyes was feigning an ignorance that was culpable, for within her heart she knew the truth of her father's tragic end, even though she calmly asserted that he still lived and was in the best of health. I had believed on entering that room, the windows of which looked out upon that grey-green wintry sea, that I should learn something concerning my dear wife, that I should perhaps obtain a clue to her whereabouts. But as I fixed my eyes upon those of Ethelwynn Greer, I saw in them a guilty knowledge, and by it knew that in that direction hope was futile.