"I have a sister, Millicent, who is married to a man called Creake.
She is about twenty-eight now and he is at least fifteen years older.
Neither my mother (who has since died) nor I cared very much about
Creake. We had nothing particular against him, except, perhaps, the
moderate disparity of age, but none of us appeared to have anything in
common. He was a dark, taciturn man, and his moody silence froze up
conversation. As a result, of course, we didn't see much of each
other."

"This, you must understand, was four or five years ago, Max,"
interposed Mr. Carlyle officiously.

Carrados maintained an uncompromising silence. Mr. Carlyle blew his
nose and contrived to impart a hurt significance into the operation.
Then Lieutenant Hollyer continued:

"Millicent married Creake after a very short engagement. It was a
frightfully subdued wedding--more like a funeral to me. The man
professed to have no relations and apparently he had scarcely any
friends or business acquaintances. He was an agent for something or
other and had an office off Holborn. I suppose he made a living out of
it then, although we knew practically nothing of his private affairs,
but I gather that it has been going down since, and I suspect that for
the past few years they have been getting along almost entirely on
Millicent's little income. You would like the particulars of that?"

"Please," assented Carrados.

"When our father died about seven years ago, he left three thousand
pounds. It was invested in Canadian stock and brought in a little over