"You mean as to Miss Gibson's relations with these two young men?"

Thorndyke nodded.

"Is it any concern of ours?" I asked.

"Certainly it is," he replied. "Everything is a concern of ours at this
preliminary stage. We are groping about for a clue and must let nothing
pass unscrutinised."

"Well, then, to begin with, she is not wildly infatuated with Walter
Hornby, I should say."

"No," agreed Thorndyke, laughing softly; "we may take it that the canny
Walter has not inspired a grand passion."

"Then," I resumed, "if I were a suitor for Miss Gibson's hand, I think I
would sooner stand in Reuben's shoes than in Walter's."

"There again I am with you," said Thorndyke. "Go on."

"Well," I continued, "our fair visitor conveyed to me the impression
that her evident admiration of Reuben's character was tempered by
something that she had heard from a third party. That expression of
hers, 'speaking from my own observation,' seemed to imply that her
observations of him were not in entire agreement with somebody else's."

"Good man!" exclaimed Thorndyke, slapping me on the back, to the
undissembled surprise of a policeman whom we were passing; "that is what
I had hoped for in you--the capacity to perceive the essential