So that, she told herself, was what had really put him on the track.

She nodded, and he added grimly: "They won't get much out of him." Then he was going to fight it--fight it to the last?
"You will stand my friend, Blanche," he asked, and slowly she bent her head.
"Of course you know what this woman Pigchalke wishes to prove ?" He was now looking keenly, breathlessly, into her pale, set face.
"Come," he said, "come, Blanche--don't be so upset! Tell me exactly what it was that Gifford told you." But she shook her head.

"I--I can't," she murmured.
"Then I will tell you what perhaps he felt ashamed to say to any friend of mine--that is that Julia Pigchalke suspects me of having done my poor Milly to death! She went and saw Panton; she did more, she actually advertised for particulars of my past life.

Did he know that ?" He waited, for what seemed a very long time to Blanche, and then in a voice which, try as he might, was yet full of suppressed anxiety, he added: "She had got hold somehow of the fact that I once lived at Chichester." Blanche looked down, and she counted over, twice, the thirty little bits of the torn telegram before she answered, in a low, muffled voice: "It's what happened at Chichester, Lionel, that made them listen to her." There was a long moment of tense, of terrible, silence between them.
At last Varick broke the silence, and, speaking in an easy, if excited, conversational tone, he exclaimed: "That's a bit of bad luck for me! I have an enemy there--an old fool of a doctor--father of that woman you met me with years ago." He walked on a few steps, leaving her standing, and then came back to her.
More seriously he asked the fateful question: "I take it I am to be arrested to-morrow ?" He saw by her face that he had guessed truly, and as if speaking to himself, he said musingly: "That means I have twenty-four hours." She forced herself to say: "They think you have a good sporting chance if you stay where you are." "It never occurred to me to go away!" he said angrily.

"I want you always to remember, Blanche, that I told you, here, and now, that, even if appearances may come to seem damnably against me, I am an innocent man." She answered: "I will always remember that, and always say so." He said abruptly: "I want you to do me a kindness." She asked uneasily: "What is it, Lionel ?" "I want you to get Gifford to prevent the meeting which has been arranged for to-morrow morning between Panton and the Home Office expert called Spiller." He waited a moment, then went on: "It was the summons to Panton which put me on the track of--of this conspiracy." And Blanche felt that this time Varick was speaking the truth.
She said, deprecatingly: "Mark would do a great deal to please me, but I'm afraid he won't do that." "I think he may," he answered, in a singular tone, "you may have a greater power of persuasion than you know." She made no answer to that, knowing well that Mark would never interfere with regard to such a matter as this.
"Can you suggest any reason I can give, why we should be all going away to-day ?" she asked falteringly.
Without a moment's hesitation he answered: "You can say there has been trouble among the servants, and that I should feel much obliged if I could have the house cleared of all my visitors by to-night." Then Blanche Farrow came to a sudden determination.