"I know more, but I would far rather know a great deal more," Berrington admitted. "Mind you, matters are out of my hands and the police are hot on the track. Why do you not confess everything and save yourself, Mary? For instance, you stand a chance of being placed in the dock on a charge of being concerned in the disappearance of Sir Charles Darryll's body." "I am as innocent of that as the grave, Phil. I only did my best to try to prevent----" "Oh, I know, I know," Berrington said impatiently. "But the fact remains that the body of Sir Charles Darryll was stolen for some vile purpose, and that the culprits are in grave danger. Your brother is at the bottom of this affair; he it was who drove up to the _Royal Palace Hotel_ in that black hansom that took the body away. And yet you say that that man----" "Is more sinned against than sinning," Mary Sartoris cried. "I say it still. Of course you regard me as blind and foolish, but then you do not know everything." "It is not a matter of what I know," Berrington protested. "Of course I should believe every word that you tell me. But the police will take another view of the matter altogether. Do you know what is going on behind that closed door yonder?" The girl shuddered and hid her face in her hands. She seemed afraid to say anything. Berrington asked the question twice before he could get any reply. "Indeed I don't," she said. "I am not altogether in my brother's confidence. I ventured to say something to him to-day and he was dreadfully angry. He locked me in my bedroom, but I managed to get the door of the dressing-room open and escaped that way. I was going to interfere when I saw you. There seem to be other people there." "Oh, there are," Berrington said bitterly. "There are two adventurers, called Reggie and Cora, who very recently passed at the _Royal Palace Hotel_ for General Gastang and Countess de la Moray. There is the scoundrel Stephen Richford who tricked Beatrice Darryll into marrying him, and then there is also a ruffian called Dr. James Bentwood. What was that?" "It seemed to me like a cry of pain," Mary Sartoris said in a frozen whisper. It was very like a cry of pain indeed, a fluttering, feeble cry ending in a moaning protest. Acting on the impulse of the moment, and forgetting Inspector Field altogether, Berrington crossed the hall and laid his hand on the knob of the door. Mary Sartoris darted after him, her face white with fear, and terror and anxiety in her accent. "Don't do it," she said, "pray restrain yourself. There are mysteries here, strange, horrible mysteries that come from the East, of which you know nothing, despite the years you have passed in India. Oh, the danger that lies there!"