And so he chatted on as we smoked our cigarettes; and as I gazed into those small queer eyes of his, I became more and more convinced that my suspicions of the previous day had been unfounded. He could not possibly have had any hand in the poor fellow's untimely end. He could not know of Guy's secret intention to make certain revelations to me--and even if he did, he knew quite well that I was already aware that he was leading a double life. No; when I carefully weighed over the whole of the facts, I came to the conclusion that the man before me--mysterious though he might be--had every motive that Guy Nicholson should live. I do not think my intelligence was much above that of the ordinary man, yet I felt that if he were an adventurer, as already seemed proved, then what more natural than that he should secure Nicholson as husband for Asta, and afterwards judiciously bleed him. It certainly was not to his interest that the fellow should die. The circumstances were full of suspicion, I admit; but the hard facts certainly disproved that Harvey Shaw had had any hand in the strange affair. Still, what was the Something which had held poor Guy horror-stricken, and which had produced symptoms so near akin to the affection of the brain that the doctors had been deceived by it and the Coroner and jury misled? The opinion I still held was that Guy Nicholson did not die a natural death. Therefore I intended to leave no stone unturned in my endeavour to probe the extraordinary mystery, and to ascertain the truth of what had actually occurred in that long old room during the silent watches of that fateful night. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. CONTAINS ANOTHER SUGGESTION. A week went by--a breathless, anxious week. I had attended poor Guy's burial in the pretty churchyard of Titmarsh village, and as I turned from the grave I could not help wondering about what he had intended to tell me, had he but lived to speak. Yet his lips were sealed. Some one had known of his intentions, and had forced silence upon him. My mind was ever full of dark thoughts and black suspicions, and yet I had so clearly proved that Harvey Shaw, against whom his intention was to speak, had had no hand in the matter. Of one thing, however, I was convinced: poor Nicholson had been cruelly murdered. About eight days after the funeral, Shaw, one hot afternoon, drove over alone in his car, and found me smoking in a deck-chair beneath a tree. The object of his visit was to tell me of Guy's will. It had been found, he said, that the young man had bequeathed the sum of ten thousand pounds to Asta. "He was infatuated with her, poor fellow," Shaw declared, in a tone of slight annoyance. "Of course she will not touch a penny of it. How could she? Ah! when he made that will, only two months ago, he never dreamt that he would meet with such a sudden end."