“Your father,” said Shelley bluntly, seeing that this girl was possessed of strong nerves, not likely to relapse into hysteria, “is dead.”

Again she nodded, almost phlegmatically. “I feared as much when you warned me to be prepared for a shock,” she said in quiet, unemotional tones.

“You are not surprised?”

“Why should I be?”

“Well, your father was by no means an old man. He was, I should think, almost in the prime of life. One does not feel surprise when a man of eighty years dies, but a man of your father’s age…”

She interrupted swiftly. “My father has been in bad health for years,” she said. “That was why he gave up his job at Portavon. He could not stand the strain of working regular hours. His heart was in a very groggy state, and there were days when he would stay in bed, just lying still and not daring to move, for fear the awful pain would come on again. Where did he die?”

“I think that this will probably be a worse shock than the news that he is dead,” said Shelley. “He died in the Reading Room of the British Museum, and he was murdered.”

Miss Arnell went white as a ghost. All the blood seemed to drain from her face, and she gripped the arms of the chair in which she sat. The veins on the back of her hands stood out in vivid relief against the sudden whiteness of her skin.

“Murdered? That can’t be. Harry would never…” Her murmuring voice died away into sudden silence.

Swiftly Shelley seized on the point. “Harry would never do what?” he asked.

“Did I say Harry?” she asked in return, getting control of herself with obvious difficulty. “I don’t know what I was talking about, Mr. Shelley. Honestly I think that the sudden shock must have sent my mind wandering along some strange bypaths of thought.” The obvious artificiality of the phrase set Shelley pondering. What on earth, he asked himself, was the girl thinking of? There must be some reasonable explanation of this sudden change of face. Who was Harry? That was the obvious line of investigation.

“Had your father any friends who could give us information about him?” he asked, dissembling his interest in the hope that, if he could set her talking again, she might give herself away somehow.

“Not many,” she said. “My father was rather a strange person. He made friends with great difficulty. I think that Professor Wilkinson of Northfield University and Dr. Crocker of Oxford were the only people who were really in his confidence over things—and they were really more acquaintances than friends, interested in the same subjects.”

“I see,” said Shelley thoughtfully. “And did they often visit him here?”

“Never.” She was very emphatic. “No one ever came here except friends of mine.”