'As I was going home yesterday afternoon, I slipped on a piece of orange peel; that means danger. In our street I saw three black cats; that means mourning for a friend. I found myself putting my walking-stick upside down into the stand; that means trouble. When I got upstairs, death stared me in the face out of my sitting-room fire. As I was smoking a pipe, your husband's portrait fell from its place on the wall, and chipped a piece off one of the corners; you know what that means as well as I do. I'll say nothing about the horrid dreams which haunted me all through the night because I'm not a superstitious man, and they may have had something to do with the dressed crab I had for supper. But I will say this, that I woke up this morning profoundly persuaded that there is something wrong. And that persuasion is with me now.' 'But what can be wrong?' He came and leaned against the edge of the table. 'Mind the flour,' I said. He waved his hand. 'What does it matter about minding the flour when we've got such facts as those to face? Mrs. Merrett, we have to put two and two together. I unhesitatingly say that the result of our doing that is to point the finger of suspicion towards the man who masqueraded as John Smith.' He rapped his knuckles so hard against the board that a piece of suet which I had left there stuck to them. 'If you don't go to Mr. John Smith, alias the Hon. Douglas Howarth, and ask him, as I asked him, what he's done with Mr. Babbacombe, you'll be neglecting your duty as a wife.' 'Mr. FitzHoward!' 'You will, Mrs. Merrett, you will! If you love your husband----' '"If!"' 'I say, if you love your husband you will insist on getting from him the answer which he refused to give me. There's a mystery, Mrs. Merrett--a mystery; and that double-named gentleman is at the back of it. My varied experience in all branches of the profession has given me the eyes of a hawk, and yesterday I saw right through him.' 'But, Mr. FitzHoward----' 'But me no buts. If you won't go I will; and I'll try to conceal the fact that I've come because you wouldn't. There are wives like that, but I didn't think that you were one.' I stood up, and I hit the table with the rolling-pin. I was not going to stand talk like that from him, or from anyone.' 'Mr. FitzHoward, I know my James, and he won't thank you for interfering with his private affairs, nor me either. If you come to mysteries, why, his whole life's a mystery: but he'll be the first to tell you not to trouble yourself about him, but to look after mysteries of your own.' 'What if he's dead?' 'Mr. FitzHoward! how can you say such things? What makes you think it?' 'I don't want to agitate you; I don't want to cause alarm. But I have my intuitions--here.' He tapped his shirt front. 'What surprises me is that you haven't got intuitions, too.' 'What makes you--have them?'