"Are you by any chance telling the truth?" "What the blazes do you mean?" and Robert's fist pounded the table heavily. "Exactly what I say. You say that you and Sylvia have arranged to get married quite soon. Those were your words. Is that true?" "Confound you, of course it is." "Sylvia has actually agreed to that?" "I asked her. What more do you want?" "I am merely inquiring civilly what she said." "Dash it, you know what girls are like. You ought to. Isn't Eileen Garth a bit coy at times?" "One might remark that Mrs. Lisle also was coy." "Look here----" began the other furiously, but the other checked him. "Let us stop bickering like a couple of counter jumpers," he said, and a shrewder man than Robert might have been warned by the slow, incisive utterance. "You make an astonishing announcement on an occasion when it might least be expected, yet resent any doubt being thrown on its accuracy. Did or did not Sylvia accept you?" "Well, she said something about not wishing to talk of marriage so soon after the old man's death, but that was just her way of putting it. I mean to marry her; and when a fellow has made up his mind on a thing like that it's best to say so and have done with it. Sylvia's a jolly nice girl, and has plenty of tin. I'm first in the field, so I'm warning off any other candidates. See?" "Yes, I see," said Hilton, pouring out another glass of wine. This time his hand was quite steady, and he drank without mishap. "Ain't you going to wish me luck?" said Robert, eying him viciously. "I agree with Sylvia. The day we have lost our father is hardly a fitting time for such a discussion; or shall I say ceremony?" "You can say what the devil you like. And you can do what you like. Only keep off my corns and I won't tread on yours." Having, as he fancied, struck a decisive blow in the struggle for that rare prize, Sylvia, Robert Fenley pushed back his chair, arose, waited a second for an answer which came not, and strode out, muttering something about being "fed up." Hilton's face was lowered, and one nervous hand shaded his brows. Robert thought he had scored, but he could not see the inhuman rage blazing in those hidden eyes. The discovery, had he made it, might not have distressed him, but he would surely have been puzzled by the strange smile which wrinkled Hilton's sallow cheeks when the door closed and the Eurasian was left alone in the dining-room. CHAPTER XII WHEREIN SCOTLAND YARD IS DINED AND WINED Three dinners for two were in progress in The Towers at one and the same hour. One feast had been shortened by the ill-concealed hatred of each brother for the other. At the second, brooding care found unwonted lodging in the charming personality of Sylvia Manning--care, almost foreboding, heightened by the demented mutterings of her "aunt." At the third, with the detectives, sat responsibility; but light-heartedly withal, since these seasoned man-hunters could cast off their day's work like a garment.