“Perhaps so,” I said resolutely; “but not the sense of mystery.  It’s that that appals me so!  I’d rather know the truth than be so wrapped up in the incomprehensible.”

He looked at me pityingly once more.

“My poor child,” he said, in the same gentle and fatherly voice, “you don’t wholly understand.  It doesn’t all come home to you.  I can see clearly, from what Inspector Wolferstan told me, after his visit to you the other day—­”

I broke in, in surprise.

“Inspector Wolferstan!” I cried.  “Then he came down here to see you, did he?”

It was horrible to find how all my movements were discussed and chronicled.

“Yes, he came down here to see me and talk things over,” Dr. Marten went on, as calmly as if it were mere matter of course.  “And I could see from what he said you were still spared much.  For instance, you remember it all only as an event that happened to an old man with a long white beard.  You don’t fully realise, except intellectually, that it was your own father.  You’re saved, as a daughter, the misery and horror of thinking and feeling it was your father who lay dead there.”

“That’s quite true,” I answered.  “I admit that I can’t feel it all as deeply as I ought.  But none the less, I’ve come down here to make a violent effort.  Let it cost what it may, I must get at the truth.  I wanted to see whether the sight of The Grange and of Woodbury may help me to recall the lost scenes in my memory.”

To my immense surprise, Dr. Marten rose from his seat, and standing up before me in a perfect agony of what seemed like terror, half mixed with affection, exclaimed in a very earnest and resolute voice: 

“Oh, Una, my child, whatever you do—­I beg of you—­I implore you—­don’t try to recall the past at all!  Don’t attempt it!  Don’t dream of it!”

“Why not?” I cried, astonished.  “Surely it’s my duty to try and find out my father’s murderer!”

Instead of answering me, he looked about him for half a minute in suspense, as if doubtful what next to do or to say.  Then he walked across with great deliberation to the door of the room, and locked and double-locked it with furtive alarm, as I interpreted his action.

So terrified did he seem, indeed, that for a moment the idea occurred to me in a very vague way—­Was I talking with the murderer?  Had the man who himself committed the crime conducted the post mortem, and put Justice off the scent?  And was I now practically at the mercy of the criminal I was trying to track down?  The thought for a second or two made me feel terribly uncomfortable.  But I glanced at his back and at his hands, and reassured myself.  That broad, short man was not the slim figure of my Picture and of the photograph.  Those large red hands were not the originals of the small and delicate white palm just displayed at the back in both those strange documents of the mysterious murder.