The good-humoured giant lumbered away, and Susan finding herself in undisputed possession took him off to remote recesses of the kitchen garden, far from casual intruders.  Meanwhile I went on reading, very much puzzled.  Naturally the style was not that of “The Diamond Gate,” which was the style of Tom Castleton and not of Adrian Boldero.  But was what I read the style of Adrian Boldero?  This vivid, virile opening?  This scene of the two derelicts who hated one another, fortuitously meeting on the old tramp steamer?  This cunning, evocation of smells, jute, bilge water, the warm oils of the engine room?  This expert knowledge so carelessly displayed of the various parts of a ship?  How had Adrian, man of luxury, who had never been on a tramp steamer in his life, gained the knowledge?  The people too were lustily drawn.  They had a flavour of the sea and the breeziness of wide spaces; a deep-lunged folk.  So that I should not be interrupted I wandered off to a secluded nook of the garden down the drive away from the house and gave myself up to the story.  From the first it went with a rare swing, incident following incident, every trait of character presented objectively in fine scorn of analysis.  There were little pen pictures of grim scenes faultless in their definition and restraint.  There was a girl in it, a wild, clean-limbed, woodland thing who especially moved my admiration.  The more I read the more fascinated did I become, and the more did I doubt whether a single line in it had been written by Adrian Boldero.

After a long spell, I took out my watch.  It was twenty past one.  We lunched at half-past.  I rose, went towards the house and came upon Jaffery and Susan.  The latter I despatched peremptorily to her ablutions.  Alone with Jaffery, I challenged him.

“You hulking baby,” said I, “what’s the good of pretending with me?  Why didn’t you tell me at once that you had written it yourself?”

He looked at me anxiously.  “What makes you think so?”

“The simple intelligence possessed by the average adult.  First,” I continued, as he made no reply but stood staring at me in ingenuous discomfort, “you couldn’t have got this out of poor Adrian’s mush; secondly, Adrian hadn’t the experience of life to have written it; thirdly, I have read many brilliant descriptive articles in The Daily Gazette and have little difficulty in recognising the hand of Jaffery Chayne.”

“Good Lord!” said he.  “It isn’t as obvious as all that?”

I laughed.  “Then you did write it?”

“Of course,” he growled.  “But I didn’t want you to know.  I tried to get as near Tom Castleton as I could.  Look here”—­he gripped my shoulder—­“if it’s such a transparent fraud, what the blazes is going to happen?”

To some extent I reassured him.  I was in a peculiar position, having peculiar knowledge.  Save Barbara, no other soul in the world had the faintest suspicion of Adrian’s tragedy.  The forthcoming book would be received without shadow of question as the work of the author of “The Diamond Gate.”  The difference of style and treatment would be attributed to the marvellous versatility of the dead genius. . . .  Jaffery’s brow began to clear.