"But--"

"Oh, it's quite incomprehensible, Jack, and it is making me horribly
unhappy. He complained so bitterly too about this police surveillance
to which he is subjected. He realizes that the coroner is almost
certain to put a wrong construction on his silence, but instead of
being frank about it he adopts, even when alone with me, this
incomprehensible attitude of resentment. In fact his behavior almost
suggests that _I_ am responsible for his present misfortunes."

"He must be mad," I said, and I expect I spoke bitterly, for Isobel
lowered her eyes and her face flushed with embarrassment.

"Don't think that I condemn him," I added hastily, "but really in
justice to you, if not in order to clear his own good name, he should
speak out at once. Are you expecting to see him to-day?"

Isobel nodded.

"I am expecting him at almost any moment," she replied; then glancing
aside at a number of daily papers which lay littered upon the floor
beside the settee: "Of course you have seen what the press has to say
about it?" she added.

I nodded.

"What can you expect?" said I. "It is one of those cases in which
practically all the evidence, although it is of a purely
circumstantial nature, points to an innocent man as the culprit. I