"As I behaved well, he was forced to depend on me, because Bob did as he liked, with his mother always ready to aid and abet him. Then came this scrape I've spoken of. I believe Bob was being blackmailed. That's the long and the short of it. Now you know the plain, ungarbled facts. Better that they should come from me than reach you with the decorations of gossip and servants' tittle-tattle." The somewhat strained and metallic voice ceased. Fenley was seated at the corner of the table near the door. Seemingly yielding to that ever-present desire for movement, he pushed with his foot an armchair out of its place at the head of the table. Sylvia Manning had pointed out that chair to Furneaux as the one occupied by Mortimer Fenley at breakfast. "Is the first Mrs. Fenley dead?" said Furneaux suddenly. "I don't think so," said Fenley, after a pause. "You are not sure?" "No." "Have you ever tried to find out?" "No, I dare not." "May I ask why?" "If it were discovered that my mother and I were in communication I would have been given short shrift in the bank." "Did she marry again?" "I don't know." Again there was silence. Furneaux seemed to be satisfied that he was following a blind alley, and Winter became the inquisitor. "What is the name of the woman with whom your brother is mixed up?" "I can not tell you, but my father knew." "What leads you to form that opinion?" "Some words that passed between Bob and him last Saturday morning." "Where? Here?" "Yes, in the hall. Tomlinson heard more distinctly than I. I saw there was trouble brewing, and kept out of it--hung back, on the pretense of reading a newspaper." "As to the missing rifle--can you help us there?" "Not in the least. I wish to Heaven Bob had gone to Africa, as he was planning. Then all this misery would have been avoided." "Do you mean your father's death?" Fenley started. He had not weighed his words. "Oh, no, no!" he cried hurriedly. "Don't try to trip me into admissions, Mr. Winter. I can't stand that, damned if I can." He jumped up, went to the sideboard and mixed himself a weak brandy and soda, which he swallowed as if his throat were afire with thirst. "I am not treating you as a hostile witness, sir," answered Winter calmly. "Mr. Furneaux and I are merely clearing the ground. Soon we shall know, or believe that we know, what line to avoid and what to follow." "Is Miss Sylvia Manning engaged to be married?" put in Furneaux. Fenley gave him a fiendish look. "What the devil has Miss Manning's matrimonial prospects got to do with this inquiry?" he said, and the venom in his tone was hardly to be accounted for by Furneaux's harmless-sounding query.