“Doesn’t it seem a little curious,” he said, “that Mr. Hartley Parrish should choose to sit and work in the library on a gusty and dark winter evening with the window wide open? You’ll allow, I think, that the window was not broken until after his death ...” Robin’s nerves were ragged. The man’s tone nettled him exceedingly. But he confined himself to making a little gesture of impatience. “No, no, sir,” said Mr. Manderton, very decidedly, “I prefer to think that the library door was open, left open by the party who went in to speak to Mr. Parrish yesterday afternoon ... and who knows more about the gentleman’s suicide than he would have people think ...” Robin boiled over fairly at this. “Good God, man!” he exclaimed, “do you accept this theory of suicide as blandly as all that? Have you examined the body? Don’t you use your eyes? I tell you ... bah, what’s the use? I’m not here to do your work for you!...” “No, sir,” said the detective, quite unruffled, “you are not. And I think I’ll continue to see about it myself!” With that he opened the corridor door and vanished down the passage. With great deliberation Robin selected a cigarette from his case, lit it, and walked out through the front door into the fresh air again. More than ever he felt the riddle of Hartley Parrish’s death weighing upon his mind. His intuitive sense rebelled against the theory of suicide, despite the medical evidence, despite the revolver in the dead man’s hand, despite the detective’s assurance. And floating about in his brain, like the gossamer on the glistening bushes in the gardens, were broken threads of vague suspicions, of half-formed theories, leading from his hasty observations in the death chamber ... In itself the death of Hartley Parrish left him cold. Yes, he must admit that. But the look in Mary Trevert’s eyes, as she had urged him to shield himself from the suspicion of having driven Hartley Parrish to his death, haunted him. Already dimly he was beginning to realize that Hartley Parrish in death might prove as insuperable a bar between him and Mary Trevert as ever he had been in life ... She was now a wealthy woman. Hartley Parrish’s will had ensured that, he knew. But it was not the barrier of riches that Robin Greve feared. He had asked Mary Trevert to be his wife before there was any thought of her inheriting Parrish’s fortune. He derived a little consolation from that reflection. At least he could not appear as a fortune-hunter in her eyes. But, until he could clear himself of the suspicion lurking in Mary Trevert’s mind that he, Robin Greve, was in some way implicated in Hartley Parrish’s death, the dead man, he felt, would always stand between them. And so ...