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Melhuish has had to leave the Hall in the middle of his visit and come to us." I inferred that she was deliberately overlooking my presence in the room for some purpose of her own. She certainly spoke as if I were not present. "Partly a misunderstanding," Jervaise said. "No reason why he shouldn't come back with me now if he wants to."
Thurston's face was impassive, and Melhuish, who thought that his companion bore himself with a curious equanimity for a ruined man, did not see that Thurston's hard fingers were clenched savagely on the handle of a pick. "I fancied you understood my opinions, and I haven't changed them," said Geoffrey.
One evening, when the men were sitting late in the smoking-room, the talk turned on the now half-forgotten drama in which the hapless Adelaide Melhuish played her last rôle. "I met Peters in the Savage Club the other night," said Hart, filling the negro-head pipe with care while he talked, "and he was chortling about his 'psychological study, as he called it, of that unfortunate chemist.
His mind dwelt constantly on the tragedy which had come so swiftly and completely into his ordered life. He could not wholly discard the nebulous theory suggested by Superintendent Fowler, but the more he surveyed it the less reasonable it seemed. The one outstanding fact in a chaos of doubt was that someone had deliberately done Adelaide Melhuish to death.
"For goodness' sake, let's drop this question of Melhuish's interference and settle the more important one of what we're going to do about you." "I resent that word 'interference," I put in. "Oh! resent it, then," Jervaise snarled. "Really, I think Mr. Melhuish is perfectly justified," Brenda said. "I feel horribly ashamed of the way you've been treating him at home.
It might, or might not, be a warning to repress any retort he had in mind. At any rate, obeying a nod from the coroner, he merely said: "She was a well-known actress, Miss Adelaide Melhuish." Mr. Belcher's pen hesitated a little. Then it scratched on. Undoubtedly, he was himself exercising the restraint he meant to impose on others. "You are quite sure?" he said, after a pause. "Quite."
Tomlin was dumbly but unanimously elected chairman of the meeting, and was vaguely aware of his responsibilities. He drew himself a fresh glass of bitter. "You don't tell me, sir!" he gasped. "Well, the idee! The pore lady's letters were addressed to Miss Adelaide Melhuish. Perhaps you don't know, sir, that she stayed here!" "Oh, yes. I was told that by the local police-constable.
The hour was not so late as when Adelaide Melhuish, or her ghost, gazed in through one of those narrow panes, but the night was dark enough to lend the necessary vraisemblance. Hart, deeply interested, looked on with rapt, eager eyes. For a full minute the tableau remained thus.
"No, I want Melhuish," he said, and stood scowling. "Well, here I am," I prompted him. "If I'm in the way..." Hughes put in, but did not attempt to get himself out of it. Jervaise ignored him. "Look here, Melhuish," he said. "I wonder if you'd mind coming up with me to the Home Farm?" "Oh! no; rather not," I agreed gladly.
The little woman's eyes were bright with the eagerness for battle, but she continued to talk automatically on absurdly immaterial subjects to relieve the strain of even those few seconds of waiting. "Our maid is out, you see, Mr. Melhuish," she explained quickly, and turning to Brenda, continued without a pause, "So Anne has even had to lend you a dress.
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