"Ah! that remains to be proved," replied Kirk. "A desperate attempt was, no doubt, made upon Miss Ethelwynn by somebody who had entered the house secretly for the same purpose as herself--by somebody who suspected that Leftwich had come to an untimely end. The would-be assassin first administered an anaesthetic, and must afterwards have injected with a hypodermic syringe some curious poison, which gave to her all the appearance of death, though the dose was fortunately inefficient. With the remembrance of Leftwich's features--which he had only seen a few minutes before--being disfigured, it seems that her assailant tried to disfigure hers by pouring upon her face hot wax from the candles alight upon the dining-room table. It was, of course, the act of a person half demented by the desire for revenge." "And you are unaware of who did this?" "I have a suspicion--a slight suspicion. It is for me to prove its truth." "You will now see the terrible position in which I have been placed, Mr. Holford," exclaimed Ethelwynn. "I knew that my father had killed a man. Was it surprising, therefore, that I should endeavour to shield him?" "Certainly not," I said. "You acted only quite naturally. My chief complaint is that you have all kept my wife aloof from me." "We will speak of that later," Kirk interrupted. "Let me continue. When I had been up to Edinburgh, and knew that the Professor lived and was in hiding, I returned and set to work to remove all traces of the unfortunate affair. To allow the facts to leak out to the public might have provoked a serious quarrel with the German Government, and I could not afford to allow that. Therefore, on the night when Langton saw the light in the drawing-room, Ethelwynn, who had come up from Broadstairs, Pietro, and myself had made up the furnace, and together we got rid of the gruesome remains, after which we ate a hasty meal. "I had previously sent Antonio to Italy for a holiday, deeming it best in the circumstances that he should be absent. Ethelwynn and Pietro had left the house, when, of a sudden, I heard the bell, and, peeping out, saw Langton at the door. It was an exciting moment. The young man had, I knew, had his suspicions aroused by meeting Antonio at Calais, for Antonio had wired me that he had been recognised. So I waited until you, very fortunately, came, and allowed me to escape." For a moment I was silent. Then I said: "You'll remember when we returned to Bath Road after my first visit to Sussex Place you were rung up on the telephone. The message caused you great alarm. What was it?" "Antonio told me of his suspicions that the dead man was not the Professor," was his reply. "And on your second visit to this house you signalled by the blind of the drawing-room, as the Professor had done." "I signalled to Pietro, who was out in the fog, that you were still with me. He had, of course, been with Ethelwynn to Foley Street, and I was about to go there."