“Well,” suggested Gordon, “it’s not much good discussing the portrait if Reeves is going to see the lovely original to-morrow. I want to know what’s wrong with a game of bridge?” “Good idea,” said Marryatt, “it’ll take our minds off the murder. You know, I think you fellows are getting rather fanciful about the whole thing.” “All right,” said Reeves, “my room, though, not downstairs. What’s the good of having one’s own fireplace if one can’t light a fire in October?” Reeves’ room deserves, perhaps, a fuller description than it has hitherto been given. It had been the best bedroom of the old Dower-house, and for some reason had been spared when several smaller rooms had been divided up, at the time of the club’s installation. It was, consequently, a quite unspoiled piece of early Tudor architecture; there were latticed windows with deep recesses; dark, irregular beams supported the white-plastered ceiling; the walls were oak-panelled; the fireplace open and of genuine old brick. When the fire, reluctant after long desuetude, had been induced to crackle, and threw flickering reflections where the shade of the electric light gave subdued half tones, there was an air of comfort which seemed to dispel all thought of detective problems, of murderers stalking the world unpunished, of the open grave that waited in Paston Oatvile churchyard. Gordon put down the photograph on a jutting cornice that went round the panelling. “There, Reeves,” he said, “you shall sit opposite the lady, and derive inspiration from her. I cannot ask you to hope that she will smile upon your efforts, but it ought to be an encouragement.” They were soon immersed in that reverential silence and concentration which the game fosters: and if Miss Rendall-Smith’s portrait did not receive much of their attention, it is probable that the lady herself, had she been present, would have been treated with little more ceremony. Reeves, however, was bad at taking his mind off a subject, and when, as dummy, he was given a short interval of unrepose, his eyes strayed to the photograph anew. Was this the face, perhaps, that had lured Brotherhood to his strange doom? Was she even an accomplice, burdened now with the participation of a guilty secret? Or was she the sufferer by the crime; and did she wait vainly for news of Davenant, little knowing that it was Davenant who lay waiting for burial at Paston Whitchurch? Poor woman, it seemed likely in any case that she would have much to bear—was it decent to inflict on her a detective interview and a series of importunate questions? He crushed down the insurgent weakness: there was no other way for it, she must be confronted with the facts. The face looked even more beautiful as you saw it in the firelight, shaded from the glare of the lamp. He strolled over to look at it again just as the last trump was led. “Good God!”