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30 "Colonel, you're—you're—God knows what you are," he murmured. "All the ordinary things sound commonplace. I believe I was going mad."

The Colonel leaned back and laughed as though the idea tickled him.

"Not you!" he declared. "Bless you, I know what nerves are! Out in India, thirty-five years ago, I've had to relieve men on frontier posts who hadn't seen a soul to speak to for six months! Weird places some of them, too—gives me the creeps to think of them sometimes! Now light up that cigar," he added, throwing one across, "and let's hear the trouble."

Wrayson lit his cigar with fingers which scarcely shook. He threw the match away and smoked for a moment in silence.

"It's about this Morris Barnes affair," he said abruptly. "I've kept something back, and I'm a clumsy hand at telling a story that doesn't contain all the truth. The consequence is, of course, that I'm suspected of having had a hand in it myself."

The Colonel's manner had for a moment imperceptibly changed. Lines had come out in his face which were not usually visible, his upper lip had stiffened. One could fancy that he might have led his men into battle looking something like this.

"What is it that you know?" he asked.

"There was another person in the flats that night, who was interested in Morris Barnes, who visited his rooms, who was with me when I first saw him dead."

The Colonel shaded his face with his hand. The heat from the fire was intense.

"Why have you kept back this knowledge?" he asked.