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"Well," suggested Gordon, "it's not much good discussing the portrait if Reeves is going to see the lovely original to-morrow. I want to know what's wrong with a game of bridge?"

"Good idea," said Marryatt, "it'll take our minds off the murder. You know, I think you fellows are getting rather fanciful about the whole thing."

"All right," said Reeves, "my room, though, not downstairs. What's the good of having one's own fireplace if one can't light a fire in October?"

Reeves' room deserves, perhaps, a fuller description than it has hitherto been given. It had been the best bedroom of the old Dower-house, and for some reason had been spared when several smaller rooms had been divided up, at the time of the club's installation. It was, consequently, a quite unspoiled piece of early Tudor architecture; there were latticed windows with deep recesses; dark, irregular beams supported the white-plastered ceiling; the walls were oak-panelled; the fireplace open and of genuine old brick. When the fire, reluctant after long desuetude, had been induced to crackle, and threw flickering reflections where the shade of the electric light gave subdued half tones, there was an air of comfort which seemed to dispel all thought of detective problems, of murderers stalking the world unpunished, of the open grave that waited in Paston Oatvile churchyard.

Gordon put down the photograph on a jutting cornice that went round the panelling. "There, Reeves," he said, "you shall sit opposite the lady,