"I daresay: he might have anticipated the fortune. However, that is my opinion, Vance, so you can take it or leave it. I don't want to hear the man's name again. I only hope he'll have the good sense to stay in the States, as I sha'n't answer for my temper when we meet." "All right, boy, don't get your hair off with me." "I haven't," said Cannington stiffly, "but the whole affair is unpleasant." "If it is for you, think what it must be for me, when I am going to marry the daughter of such a rotter." "You will keep to your engagement, then?" "Of course," I returned indignantly. "What do you take me for?" "A jolly good chap," said the boy, giving me a friendly dig. "I expect she--the lady, I mean--is worth it. Mabel says that she is no end of a beauty." "Mabel is one of the few girls who can praise beauty in another. For that pretty speech she shall have the best wedding present I can procure." "It may not be wanted," grunted Cannington. I laughed and looked ahead at the pair quarreling in the moonlight. "On the contrary, I shall have to see to the matter at once," said I lightly. On that night when I got back to the inn and retired to bed I thought long and deeply. Cannington's chance remark about Marr being in the neighborhood during the time the crime was committed convinced me that the man had been to Mootley. Gertrude had caught sight of him when she was in the back room, and had fled. For this reason she had declined to tell me the name of the mysterious person. And again, the presence of the glass eye on the drawing-room table was explained in a reasonable way. Monk had left it there, and apparently by chance, since, knowing, he would never have allowed such evidence of his guilt to remain there. How he had recovered it again I could not say, as he had been with me all the time until we re-entered the drawing-room together. It might be that Gertrude, in spite of her denial, had chanced on the eye, and, remembering her father's presence in the shop, had concealed it, thinking--and with good reason--that he was guilty. Even to me, under the circumstances, she would deny the truth, so I did not blame her overmuch. But I arranged in my own mind to see her the next day and learn for certain if she really believed her father to be guilty. On the grounds set forth he assuredly seemed to be. But when the next day came, I did not call on Gertrude, for--as the saying goes--I had other fish to fry. At ten o'clock I received a telegram, asking me to be in London that afternoon at three o'clock. And the wire was from Mr. Walter Monk, or, as it was signed, Wentworth Marr. "Come up to my rooms at three to-day," ran the wording, "S. threatens. I want you to deal with him. WENTWORTH MARR." There was a prepaid reply, so I sent an answer saying I would be in Stratford Street at the appointed time. Then I sat down to consider the meaning of the summons.