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 that he loved his wife; that he had been true to her in thought and deed; that he passionately regretted her death, for which he had been in no way responsible; and that whatever Nora Verney's reasons were for disliking him, they were childish or unjust.

It had been easy to say that she did not want to know them, but Terry could not control her curiosity, nor could she prevent her imagination from wandering downstairs to the salle à manger, with its one long table, at which the guests who dined in public must assemble. She pictured Sir Ian at one end of the table, and the self-appointed detective at the other; but she was far from guessing at the presence of another detective, appointed by Scotland Yard.

Paul Michel, neat, inconspicuous, very like a middle-class French tourist, was at the table d'hôte enjoying the dinner which he felt that he had well earned. Also he was enjoying the thought of the play upon which he would presently ring up the curtain. That which was going on now, he said to himself, was no more than a prologue; but it was rather a brilliant prologue.

Since arriving Michel had accomplished a good deal. He had ferreted out the fact that the driver who conducted Miss Ricardo and Miss Verney from Chamounix, was not of St. Pierre de Chartreuse or of the neighbourhood, though the impression had been created in the Chamounix hotel that the ladies' carriage was coming from St. Pierre. No one at the latter