"On the night of the Easter ball at Avonham all the women's jewellery was taken from their rooms--by Sydney." "Who told you that?" "Never mind who told me; it's a fact. It's the topic among the people we know." "He did it for a lark; he has a peculiar sense of humour." "That's how you look at it; you may well call it peculiar. There's something else which is being said of him, still more peculiar." "He has committed murder?" "That's what's being said." "George, do you know you're talking of your own brother?" "Don't I know it? You've seen in the papers about this Noel Draycott who is missing; he's one of the men who accused him that night at poker. They say that after Sydney had made off with the women's jewels he came across Draycott, there was a row, and he killed him. And this is the man Violet has gone to London to look for! She's not the only person who is doing it. And I'll say this--I hope that neither she nor anyone else will find him. I don't want to have my name entered in the Newgate Calendar, nor to see my brother finish at the gallows." "Is it possible, do you think, that Violet can know of this--of these charges which are alleged against him?" "I'm told it's because she knows that she's gone to town. She's got some cranky notion in her head that this is a case in which, for love's sake, the world would be well lost. To associate love with a man like that!" CHAPTER XXIV 2A Cobden Mansions It was hard to see what Violet Forster had gained by her change of residence, even from her own point of view; she felt that herself. She was conscious that Cobden Mansions was not Nuthurst, and that her particular corner in that tall, ugly, red brick building left a deal to be desired. And so far as she could see, she had done no good by coming; she had learnt absolutely nothing of Sydney Beaton's whereabouts; she could not have learnt less had she chosen to stray in the woods at Nuthurst instead of the highways and by-ways of London.