"And in your possession?" and, as he spoke, his dark eyes were fixed very intently on the young man. "They are somewhere about the house, but they are never used." "I wish them found. Then, when they are found, I must ask you to give me your word of honour that no living creature, not even you yourself, will enter that garden without my knowing it. Will you do this?" "I will do it," Penlyn said. "But I wish you would tell me your reason." "I will tell you nothing more at present. But remember that I have a task to perform and that I shall do it." Then he left him, and walked away to the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. "What I have seen to-day," he said to himself, "would have baffled many a man. But you, Miguel, are different from other men. You are not baffled, you are only still more determined to do what you have to do. But who is he?--who is he? _Caramba!_ he is not Lord Penlyn!" CHAPTER XVI. "The story about this Spaniard, Guffanta, is a strange one," Philip Smerdon wrote from Occleve Chase to Lord Penlyn, who had informed him of the visit he had received and the revelations made by the Señor, "but I may as well tell you at once that I don't believe it, although you say that the lawyers, as well as Stuart and Dobson, are inclined to do so. My own opinion is that, though he may not have killed Mr. Cundall, he is still telling you a lie--for some reason of his own, as to the friendship that existed between them; and he probably thinks that by pretending to be able to find the man, he will get some money from you. With regard to his having been face to face with the murderer, why, if so, does he not say on what occasion and when? To know his face _as that of the murderer_, is to say, what in plainer words would be, that he had either known he was about to commit the act, or that he had witnessed it. It admits of no other interpretation, and, consequently, what becomes of his avowed love for Cundall, if he knew of the contemplated deed and did not prevent it, or, having witnessed it, did not at once arrest or kill his aggressor? You may depend upon it, my dear Gervase, that this man's talk is nothing but empty braggadocio, with, as I said before, the probable object of extracting money from you as he previously extracted it from your brother. "As to the locking up of the garden and allowing no one to enter it, I am inclined to think that it is simply done with the object of making a pretence of mysteriously knowing something that no one else knows. And it is almost silly, for your garden would scarcely happen to be selected by the murderer as a place to visit, and what object could he have in so visiting it? However, as it is a place never used, I should gratify him in this case, only I would go a little farther than he wishes, and never allow it to be opened--not even when he desires it."