Looking up, he said: "It is strange that you of all men, my neighbour here, should have heard of this.

Not a whisper of its being known has ever reached me.
How many people do you think have any idea of it ?" I told him all that I knew and concluded by showing him Reggie Dacre's letter, which I had kept in the letter-case in my pocket.

He returned it to me without a word.

Presently he broke a spell of silence.

All this time he had sat fixed in the one attitude--only shifted once, when Marigold entered to clear away the breakfast things and was dismissed by me with a glance and a gesture.
"Do you remember," he said, "a talk we had about fear, in April, the first time I was over?
I described what I knew.