"So were the circumstances of his--disappearance.

I can assure you that I have had the police inspector of fiction asking me curious questions and I am convinced that down in Devonshire I am still an object of suspicion to the local gossips." "I remember reading about the affair at the time," Horlock remarked, as he unlocked the door.

"It never occurred to me, though, to connect it with anything of this sort.

Surely Palliser was a cut above the ordinary blackmailer ?" Tallente shrugged his shoulders.

"A confusion of ethics," he said.