“Are you mad, Robin?” she cried. “Who could have wanted to kill poor Hartley? Why should you put these ideas into the heads of the police? Bude may have imagined everything. Now, you’ll be sensible, promise me....” Very gently he detached the two slim hands that held his coat. His mouth was set in a firm line. “We are going to sift this thing to the bottom, Mary,” he said, “no matter what are the consequences. You owe it to Parrish and you owe it to me....” The telephone trilled suddenly. Robin picked up the receiver, “Yes, Bude,” he said. There was a moment’s silence in the room broken as the clock on the mantelpiece chimed nine times. Then Robin said into the telephone: “Right! Tell him I’ll be down immediately!” He put down the receiver and turned to Mary. “A detective inspector has arrived from London. He is asking to see me. I must go downstairs.” Mary, her elbows on the mantelpiece, was staring into the fire. At the sound of his voice she swung round quickly. “Robin!” she cried. But she spoke too late. Robin Greve had left the room. CHAPTER IX. MR. MANDERTON A quality which had gone far to lay the foundations of the name which Robin Greve was rapidly making at the bar was his strong intuitive sense. He had the rare ability of correctly ‘sensing’ an atmosphere, an uncanny _flair_ for driving instantly at the heart of a situation, which rendered him in the courts a dexterous advocate and a redoubtable opponent. Now, as he came into the lounge from the big oak staircase, he instantly realized that he had entered an unfriendly atmosphere. The concealed lights which were set all round the cornice of the room were turned on, flooding the pleasantly snug room with soft reflected light. A little group stood about the fire, Bude, Jay, Hartley Parrish’s man, and a stranger. Jay was engaged in earnest conversation with the stranger. But at the sound of Greve’s foot upon the staircase, the conversation ceased and a silence fell on the group. Greve’s attention was immediately attracted towards the stranger, whom he surmised to be the detective from Scotland Yard. He was a big, burly man with a heavy dark moustache, straight and rather thin black hair, and coarse features. He looked a full-blooded, plethoric person with reddish-blue veins on his florid face, and a heavy jowl which over-feeding, Robin surmised, had made fullish. He was very neatly dressed in his black overcoat with velvet collar carefully brushed, his natty black tie with its pearl pin, and well-polished boots. His black bowler hat, with a pair of heavy dogskin gloves, neatly folded, lay on the table. “This Mr. Greve?”