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266 we are about it. Please sit down.' She took the envelope containing Trent's manuscript dispatch from the table where he had laid it. 'I want to speak about this.'

His brows bent, and he looked at her questioningly. 'So do I, if you do,' he said slowly. 'I want very much to know one thing.'

'Tell me.'

'Since my reason for suppressing that information was all a fantasy, why did you never make any use of it? When I began to realize that I had been wrong about you, I explained your silence to myself by saying that you could not bring yourself to do a thing that would put a rope round a man's neck, whatever he might have done. I can quite understand that feeling. Was that what it was? Another possibility I thought of was that you knew of something that was by way of justifying or excusing Marlowe's act. Or I thought you might have a simple horror, quite apart from humanitarian scruples, of appearing publicly in connection with a murder trial. Many important witnesses in such cases have to be practically forced into giving their evidence. They feel