"Well--if you are not perfectly frank with me, Mr. Kirk," I protested, "I cannot see how I can regard you as a sincere friend. This is a serious and complicated problem, in which you require my assistance in an endeavour to seek a solution. How can I form any conclusions or help you if you deliberately hold back from me some of the circumstances?" "I have held back none," was his hasty response--"at least, none which have any bearing whatever upon the tragedy. It is of myself and my own connection with Greer that I am speaking. I was the first person called, before there was even a suspicion of anything wrong. The fact is, the dead man trusted me implicitly." "And, according to your showing, certain enemies of yours suspected the truth--that your friendship for the Professor was only feigned." My companion looked me straight in the face with his narrow-set eyes, and replied: "My dear Mr. Holford, what my enemies say was, I admit, perfectly correct. I have sought to conceal nothing. Greer believed that I was his friend, but I hated him. I had good cause to do so!" The man's crafty eyes again met mine, and I saw in them an expression which I had never noticed before. Was it possible that he was the unknown assassin, and was only misleading me by clever and cunning devices? I recollected that he had told me that the Professor had stolen from him some valuable secret. Well, if he did not fear the crime of retaliation being brought home to him, why did he not go openly and lay the facts before the police? His evasive replies and thin excuses appeared to be utterly ridiculous. In my foolish ignorance I still believed Kershaw Kirk to be an ordinary individual, much like myself. The remarkable truth had not then been revealed to me--as it was later. We descended to the dining-room, where Antonio and his brother Pietro were still watching beside the couch whereon lay the poor girl who had met with such a strange and inexplicable fate. Kirk again knelt beside her, and for a long time searched for any wound she might bear. But he found none. "Remember, Antonio, no person must enter this house under any pretext whatever," my companion ordered. "You are responsible." "No one shall know anything, signore," replied the man. "Morgan and the maids are all in ignorance--for you, signore, kept it so cleverly from them." "A woman never can keep a secret," Kirk answered sharply, "and if we are to fathom the mystery of your master's death not a word must leak out. You know what I have told you." "I recollect, signore," the man replied. And, using the Italian oath, he said, "I have promised you, upon the tomb of my sainted mother." "Then close this room, and with your brother keep a watchful vigil until to-morrow." And we both went out, and were soon running in the car back towards Bedford Park.