"Well, if you won't, you won't. These are not the days of the thumbscrew and the rack, Captain Macdonald, and a man's tongue cannot be made to speak by any other means than a little confinement in a prison cell. And I don't think that's really necessary, in your case, do you, Mr. Narkom? So we'll let that pass for the present. But I'd like you to understand that--on account of your refusing to acquaint us with the facts of your presence here in the grounds of this place last night--we are obliged, in the maintenance of Law and Order, to put you upon your parole." "Thanks very much." Captain Macdonald bowed, with much mockery of lip and gesture, and then, turning to the others in that silent little knot of spectators, made his way over to the side of Maud Duggan, whose face was as pale as a dead face, and in whose eyes lurked the suspicion of a great fear, and laid his hand upon her arm. They conversed for a moment or two in low voices utterly oblivious of those others who were searching their faces with curious eyes, while in the background Ross Duggan fidgeted with his watch-chain and sent his handsome eyes searching each figure in that still room, as though in an endeavour to find a clue therein which would lift the pall of hateful suspicion from his own shoulders. Cleek surveyed them critically. It was an abominably personal sort of case, to say the least of it. And not much to his liking. But the element of mystery in the whole affair gripped his interest in spite of these other drawbacks. Of course there was no truth in the cock-and-bull story of the Peasant Girl--that went without saying. But that it had been used as a "blind" to cover the real perpetrators of the crime was evident to his mind. And why _two_ of them? For in each case death would have been caused instantaneously. He looked down at the spinning wheel standing there in the recess of the window, and tried to link the thing up with it. But there seemed no peg to hang a clue upon there. Obviously the thing had been "worked" with just such an idea to disguise its real purport. Then he thought of the letters that he had found in the desk, hidden away and yellowed with Time's fingers, and tied about with faded ribbon. And of a sudden something flashed across his face which, Mr. Narkom watching him as a cat does a mouse and knowing to a nicety what those expressions so often meant, made that worthy gentleman positively jump with excitement. Cleek smiled at him and shook a head over his eagerness. Then he turned to the rest of them.