"Yes. I know all about the others," interrupted Haken in a level voice. "They have their own fish to fry, and are not particular how big a blaze they make to fry them. Of course, I expected you would find out." "Did you? And why?" "Why," Haken pushed back his chair, and rose with a chuckle, "didn't Sophia inveigle you into helping young Shepworth and the girl he was engaged to? You could scarcely do that and not cross my trail." "Why didn't you confess to me?" asked Prelice, much vexed. "Confess what? That I murdered Lanwin?" "And that you stabbed Agstone." "The deuce." Haken started at this last remark. "They accuse me of that, do they? I didn't know that they would go so far. Well," he looked very straightly at his nephew, and with very bright eyes, "you have no doubt heard what these people have had to say, and no doubt they have manufactured good fiction out of certain facts. My character, I take it, is as black as a crow." "Blacker, if anything." "No doubt. Well, and what do you say?" "I say that Jadby and Madame Marie, and possibly Horace, are liars." Haken walked round the table, and placed his hand on his nephew's shoulder. "Do you believe that I am guilty?" "Certainly not." "Why. On what grounds?" Prelice laughed. He had always doubted the guilt of his uncle, ever since the telling of it in Rutland Square. Now he was sure that, however cleverly the story had been put together, Simon Haken would be quite capable of reconstructing it so as to prove his innocence. He therefore answered, with a laugh: "On the grounds that you are much too clever a man to commit a murder without making things much safer than they appear to be in this instance." "Thank you," said Haken simply, and after a friendly squeeze of Prelice's shoulder he returned to his seat. A weaker man would have required a more emotional denial, but Haken was too strong and too business-like to trouble about sentiment. "You see," he remarked, when again in his chair, "it would not have suited me to murder Lanwin." "No," assented Prelice, tickled by the remark; "murder in this country is attended with certain disadvantages." Haken chuckled, and drank a second glass of port. In spite of his nonchalance, he was more nervous than he chose to admit. "Now tell me how our friends bring home the crime to me, and why they told you about the business." "I shall tell you the whole case from the beginning," said Prelice after a pause. "My connection with it began when Aunt Sophia came to bully me into doing something." Haken nodded sympathetically. "When your aunt interferes there is generally trouble. Well?"