The girl remained impassive, but her eyes grew rather hard. “These payments are still going on?” she asked. Jeekes hesitated. Then he nodded, “Yes,” he said. “Well? Was she blackmailing ... him?” “No, no,” Mr. Jeekes averred hastily. “But there was some unpleasantness some months ago ... er ... a county court action, to be precise, about some bills she owed. Mr. Parrish was very angry about it and settled to prevent it coming into court. But there was some talk about it ... in legal circles ...” He threw a rather scared glance at the girl. “Please explain yourself, Mr. Jeekes,” she said coldly. “I don’t understand ...” “Her lawyer was Le Hagen—it’s a shady firm with a big criminal practice. They sometimes brief Mr. Greve ...” Mary Trevert clasped and unclasped her hands quickly. “I quite understand, Mr. Jeekes,” she said. “You needn’t say any more ...” She turned away in a manner that implied dismissal. It was as though she had forgotten the secretary’s existence. He picked up his _attaché_ case and walked slowly to the door. A sharp exclamation broke from his lips. “Miss Trevert,” he cried, “the door ... I shut it a little while back ... look, it’s ajar!” The girl who stood at the fire switched on the electric light by the mantelpiece. “Is ... is ... the door defective? Doesn’t it shut properly?” The little secretary forced out the questions in an agitated voice. The girl walked across the room and shut the door. It closed perfectly, a piece of solid, well-fitting oak. “What does it mean?” said Mr. Jeekes in a whisper. “You understand, I should not wish what I told you just now about Mr. Parrish to be overheard ...” They opened the door again. The dusky corridor was empty. CHAPTER XIV. A SHEET OF BLUE PAPER The sight of that crumpled ball of slatey-blue paper brought back to Robin’s mind with astonishing vividness every detail of the scene in the library. Once more he looked into Hartley Parrish’s staring, unseeing eyes, saw the firelight gleam again on the heavy gold signet ring on the dead man’s hand, the tag of the dead man’s bootlace as it trailed from one sprawling foot across the carpet. Once more he felt the dark cloud of the mystery envelop him as a mist and with a little sigh he smoothed out the crumpled paper. It was an ordinary quarto sheet of stoutish paper, with a glazed surface, of an unusual shade of blue, darker than what the stationers call “azure,” yet lighter than legal blue. At the top right-hand corner was typewritten a date: “Nov. 25.” Otherwise the sheet was blank. The curious thing about it was that a number of rectangular slits had been cut in the paper. Robin counted them. There were seven. They were of varying sizes, the largest a little over an inch, the smallest not more than a quarter of an inch, in length. In depth they measured about an eighth of an inch.