"Had he lived, his intention was to meet your father in secret at Totnes in Devonshire. Why in secret, I wonder?" "That same question has been puzzling me for a long time, Mr Kemball," she said quickly. "I have arrived at the conclusion that he feared lest Mrs Olliffe might know of his arrival in England and set some one to watch his movements. He feared her." "Then there may have been some reason why the woman desired that they should not meet, eh?" "Apparently so." I reflected. Mrs Olliffe now knew that I had borne a message to Shaw from the dead man who had destroyed a fortune. Did she fear its results, and was she, for that reason, holding out to Shaw the olive branch of peace? I suggested that to Asta, and she was inclined to agree with me. "We must do what we can to break off your father's friendship with this woman," I declared. "It is distinctly dangerous for him." "Yes, Mr Kemball," she cried. "I only wish we could! I only wish--" Her sentence was interrupted by a sound which startled both of us. We listened, looking into each other's serious face without uttering a word. The sound emanated from the next room--Shaw's bedroom--the door of which was closed. It was that low, peculiar whistle which I had first heard on the morning I had visited Titmarsh after poor Guy's mysterious death, and had heard on a second occasion when visiting at Lydford. "There's Dad again?" she cried, in a strained voice. "He evidently doesn't know we are still up." The whistle was again repeated--a low, long-drawn, peculiar sound, in a high shrill note. It was not the unconscious whistle of a man thinking, but a sound full of meaning--a distinct call, which even as we listened in silence was repeated a third time. CHAPTER TWENTY. THE MAN WITH THE CRIMSON BUTTON. Pale and startled, she raised her finger in a gesture of silence, and we both stole noiselessly from the room, closing the door behind us. Upon the thick carpet of the corridor we crept past Shaw's door, and Asta disappeared into her own chamber, which adjoined, while I went on to mine. I could not get that peculiar whistle out of my ears. It seemed as though it were a signal to somebody; yet though I went back to Shaw's door and listened there for a full hour, I heard no sound of any movement. The room was in darkness, and he was, no doubt, already asleep. When I turned in, I lay a long time thinking over the reason of Shaw's friendship with the woman Olliffe. What Asta had told me only seemed to increase the mystery, rather than diminish it. I must have dropped off to sleep about two o'clock, puzzled and fagged out by the long hours on the road, when I was suddenly awakened by hearing a loud, shrill scream. I started up and listened. It was Asta's voice shrieking in terror. I sprang out into the corridor without a second's hesitation and rapped upon the door, crying-- "What's the matter. Let me in."