it again.  He had studied medicine, I believe.  But he confessed everything else, how he had been madly in love with the poor girl when he was her father’s secretary, and how she treated him like a servant and made her father turn him out, and how he hated Van Torp furiously for being engaged to marry her.  He hated the Nickel Trust, too, because he had thought the shares were going down and had risked the little he had as margin on a drop, and had lost it all by the unexpected rise.  He drank harder after that, till he was getting silly from it, when the girl’s death gave him his chance against Van Torp, and he manufactured the evidence in the diary he kept, and went to Bamberger with it and made the poor man believe whatever he invented.  He told me all that, with a lot of details, but I could not make him admit that he had killed the girl himself, so I gave him his opium and he went to sleep.  That’s my story.  Or rather, it’s his, as I got it from him last Thursday.  I supposed there was plenty of time, but Mr. Bamberger seems to have been in a hurry after we had got Feist into the Home.’

‘Had you told Mr. Van Torp all this?’ asked Lady Maud anxiously.

‘No,’ Logotheti answered.  ’I was keeping the information ready in case it should be needed.’

A familiar voice spoke behind them.

‘Well, it’s all right as it is.  Much obliged, all the same.’

All three turned suddenly and saw that Mr. Van Torp had crept up while they were talking, and the expression of his tremendous mouth showed that he had meant to surprise them, and was pleased with his success in doing so.

‘Really!’ exclaimed Lady Maud.

‘Goodness gracious!’ cried the Primadonna.

‘By the Dog of Egypt!’ laughed Logotheti.

‘Don’t know the breed,’ answered Van Torp, not understanding, but cheerfully playful.  ‘Was it a trick dog?’

‘I thought you were in London,’ Margaret said.

’I was.  Between one and four this morning, I should say.  It’s all right.’  He nodded to Lady Maud as he spoke the last words, but he did not seem inclined to say more.

‘Is it a secret?’ she asked.

‘I never have secrets,’ answered the millionaire.  ’Secrets are everything that must be found out and put in the paper right away, ain’t they?  But I had no trouble at all, only the bother of waiting till the office got an answer from the other side.  I happened to remember where I’d spent the evening of the explosion, that’s all, and they cabled sharp and found my statement correct.’

‘Why did you never tell me?’ asked Lady Maud reproachfully.  ’You knew how anxious I was!’

‘Well,’ replied Mr. Van Torp, dwelling long on the syllable, ’I did tell you it was all right anyhow, whatever they did, and I thought maybe you’d accept the statement.  The man I spent that evening with is a public man, and he mightn’t exactly think our interview was anybody else’s business, might he?’