"Oh, thank you," he said, half laughing, with a very curious air.
"I'm a policeman, as I told you. But I don't need tips. I'm the
Chief Constable of Quebec--there's my card; Major Tascherel,--and
I'm glad to be of use, I'm sure, to any friend of Dr. Ivor's."

He lifted his hat with the inborn grace of a high-born gentleman. I
coloured and bowed. The train steamed out of the station. As it
went, I fell back, half fainting, in the comfortable armchair of the
Pullman car, hardly able to speak with surprise and horror. It was
all so strange, so puzzling, so bewildering! Then I owed my escape
from the stenographic myrmidons of the Canadian Press to the polite
care and attention of my father's murderer!

Major Tascherel was a friend, he said, of Dr. Ivor's!

Then Dr. Ivor knew I had come. He knew I was going to Palmyra to
find him. And yet he had written to Quebec, apparently, expecting
this crush, and asking his friend the Chief Constable to protect and
befriend me. Had he murdered my father, and was he in love with me
still? Did he think I'd come out, not to track him down, but to look
for him? Strange, horrible questions! My heart stood still within me
at this extraordinary revelation. Yet I was so frightened at the
moment, alone in a strange land, that I felt almost grateful to the
murderer himself for his kindness in thinking of me and providing
for my reception.

As I settled in my seat and had time to realise what these things
meant, it dawned upon me by degrees that all this was less
remarkable, after all, than I first thought it. For they had
telegraphed from England that I sailed on the Sarmatian; and Dr.