had a secret. Perhaps something relating to that secret is mixed up with
his visit to Marketstoke. Depend upon it, an old woman of over
seventy--especially a landlady of a country-town inn, whose wits are
presumably pretty sharp--wouldn't send for me unless she'd something to
tell. Before midnight, my dear sir, we may have learnt a good deal."

Viner picked up his hat.

"I'll be ready for you at half-past five," he said. Then, halfway to the
door, he turned with a question: "By the by," he added, "you wouldn't
like me to tell the two ladies that we've found out where Ashton went
when he was away?"

"I think not until we've found out why he went away," answered the old
lawyer with a significant smile. "We may draw the covert blank, you know,
after all. When we've some definite news--"

Viner nodded, went out, into the afternoon calm of Bedford Row. As he
walked up it, staring mechanically at the old-fashioned red brick fronts,
he wondered how many curious secrets had been talked over and perhaps
unravelled in the numerous legal sanctuaries approached through those
open doorways. Were there often as strange ones as that upon which he had
so unexpectedly stumbled? And when they first came into the arena of
thought and speculation did they arouse as much perplexity and mental
exercise as was now being set up in him? Did every secret, too, possibly
endanger a man's life as his old schoolfellow's was being endangered? He
had no particular affection or friendship for Langton Hyde, of whom,
indeed, he had known very little at school, but he had an absolute
conviction that he was innocent of murder, and that conviction had
already aroused in him a passionate determination to outwit the police.