had kept to the code of what is usually called honour in these matters. As for Margaret Harrison—but from her I had never expected anything but lies.
But if this was the truth, why should my father have committed suicide? For I still did not believe in the theory of accident. Either something must have opened his eyes during Lathom’s visit to town, or else that other, darker suspicion, which I had hardly liked to glance at, was only too well-founded.
I am a business man. I have the business man’s liking for facts. To me, an expert’s knowledge is a fact. Experts occasionally make mistakes, but to me it appears far less probable that an expert should be mistaken than that an artist and a woman should be unprincipled. And I cannot make it too clear that my father’s expert knowledge in the matter of fungi was to be trusted. I would as cheerfully stake my life on the wholesomeness of a dish prepared by my father as on the stability of a girder-stress calculated by my chief, Sir Maurice Berkeley. But I would not venture a five-pound note on the honesty or virtue of such people as Lathom and Margaret Harrison.
But to prove the truth of my suspicions, I needed more facts—the sort of facts that a jury would accept. To them, my father’s knowledge of fungi would not be a fact at all.
I turned the matter over in my mind, and eventually came to the conclusion that, whether I liked it or not, I must see the woman Cutts. I hoped that she would come to me, but several days passed and I saw nothing of her. Either the creature had no facts to sell, or she was holding off in the hope of securing better terms. I saw through her artifice well enough, but I saw also that she had me at a disadvantage. Eventually, and with great reluctance, I wrote to her as follows, addressing the letter to Lathom’s studio.