A feeling of resentment had been growing up within me with every yard which I had been placing between Mary and myself. I had been telling myself that this Marquis of Twickenham game was hardly worth the candle, and that if I had to choose between Mary and the marquisate, the dignity might go hang. Only let his lordship withdraw from his banking account thirty or forty thousand pounds in cash, and it was not improbable that he might disappear for another fifteen years. In which case Mr. and Mrs. James Merrett would take a trip abroad. This loud-voiced, blustering bully had caught me in a dangerous mood. What he might want with the Marquis of Twickenham I had no notion. But the contrast he presented to the sweet saint in Little Olive Street offered me just the opportunity I needed to take it out of some one. I walked past him into the dining-room. He followed, leaving the door wide open. 'Have the goodness to shut the door.' His response was the soul of courtesy. 'Shut it yourself! I'm not your servant.' Directly he said that, I remembered where I had seen him last, and the name by which he had been known to me; the recollection gave me the most genuine sensation of pleasure. The Marquis of Twickenham should be avenged. 'Mr. Fraser, shut that door!' When I called him by that name he started. 'Who are you speaking to?' 'To Andrew Fraser--who lately carried on one of the branches of his usurer's business at 14 Colmore Road, Birmingham. I have a statement referring to you, which was made to me by Isabel Kingham, also of Birmingham, half an hour before she died. That statement will supply the police with some information they are very anxious to receive. If you would like me to provide any one who may be listening outside with spicy details of your connection with the lady, I am willing.' It's not often you are able to bag a man with the first barrel, especially a man of the type who was then in front of me. But when you do succeed, the sensation is delicious, as I experienced on that occasion. That he had come to crush the Marquis of Twickenham was obvious; having good reasons for believing that that fortunate peer was his to crush. That he was the kind of individual who enjoyed crushing any one or anything was as plain as the fact that he was likely to resent with the utmost bitterness any attempt which might be made at crushing him. Nothing, probably, had been further from his mind than the idea that his intended victim would essay so hazardous a feat. He thought, possibly, knowing his man, that all he had to anticipate was his more or less abject humiliation. That first shot of mine was not only unexpected, but hitting him even before he was fairly on the wing, it bowled him completely over. The look of amazement which was on his hirsute countenance was distinctly comical. He shut the door with almost acrobatic rapidity. 'What the devil are you talking about?'