"Are you?" the Hindoo's voice was smooth, almost sneering. "My dear lady, why be more frightened by day than by night? You were not frightened when you fluttered in by that window barely a month ago. Did you kill the old lady? I wonder--why were you not honest with me?" "Kill? Kill whom, Mr. Dall? My God, what are you talking about?" The sneer in the Hindoo's voice was less veiled than ever. "Why, the real Miss Cheyne, of course. Why didn't you leave that to me? I should have done it far better, believe me." Cleek caught the sound of a strangled breath and his pulses drummed. "Good Heavens, man!" came Lady Brenton's voice again, "are you mad to accuse me of such a thing? Why should I murder her, poor creature? And how?" Came a cackle of harsh laughter like a shot on a tin roof. "Well acted, my lady, but it won't work. Don't forget, I saw you in that very room, when, according to our old friend, Constable Roberts, Miss Cheyne was dead. Well, who killed her, I say? You did not know I saw you but I caught sight of your golden scarf as you bent over the body----" Cleek sucked in his breath hard and a brighter sparkle shone in his half-shut eyes. So Lady Brenton was there, was she? If this were true, then Sir Edgar knew more than he professed, and he was shielding someone other than Lady Margaret--and that someone was his own mother! Lady Brenton had remained perfectly still, as though dumbfounded at the charge made against her. Either that was it, or she was striving how best to free herself from the power of this man who held her guilty secret. Then she spoke suddenly. "You really mean that you think I killed that poor defenceless old woman?" Cleek could fairly see the cynical smile that crept over the man's features, for the tones of his voice betrayed it. "Dear lady," he answered, "it is what anybody would say if they had seen you, as I saw you, emerge from that room with a gold lace scarf round your face. I watched you cross that lawn and vanish in the darkness." "That is not the truth," she flung back with a sudden awakening from the kind of stupor which up till now had overcome her. "I never wore that gold scarf for the simple reason I did not possess one at that time. I was never near Cheyne Court. If you say you saw me, you are saying what is absolutely untrue. And there is another thing, since you are so sure that I was responsible for that horrible deed, what were you doing at Cheyne Court that night at all?" Gunga Dall's answer to Lady Brenton's question was given so quickly, even as Cleek himself echoed the thought in his own mind, that he might well have been forgiven in believing that it had been prepared beforehand. "I followed you, my dear lady----" "Followed me?" she repeated. "From where, pray? Oh, this is intolerable!" "I saw you as I turned into the lane and I rather wondered, as was only natural, what you were doing at that unearthly hour and place."